


The God Who Built a World

by semaphore27



Series: The God Who... [2]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Norse Religion & Lore, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Movies), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Avengers Tower, Domestic Avengers, Evil Odin (Marvel), F/F, F/M, Gen, Good Loki (Marvel), Hurt Loki (Marvel), Jotunn Loki (Marvel), M/M, Odin (Marvel)'s Bad Parenting, Thor (Marvel) is a Good Bro, Tony Feels, Tony Has Issues, Tony Stark Has A Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-25
Updated: 2018-05-02
Packaged: 2019-04-06 20:50:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 24
Words: 99,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14065320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/semaphore27/pseuds/semaphore27
Summary: So... life is complicated, but these stories are slowly coming back. Warmest thanks to those of you who wrote to say you missed them.Anyway...Loki and Tony are now an official couple, getting to know each other.  Along with everything that entails, including difficulties only an interspecies couple could face, there's Loki's continuing struggle with the loss of his memory and the damage to his mind, Tony's struggle not to drink, a team of not-always-supportive Avengers, Loki's new life as an art student, a New Year's surprise, and Odin's continued attempts to prevent his son from finding happiness in exile and their lives are about as full of adventure as they can stand.





	1. Million Dollar Bash

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You are cordially invited to the Stark Industries Annual New Year's Eve Party.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song "Million Dollar Bash," by Bob Dylan, was first recorded in 1967.
> 
> Et al. is an abbreviation for the Latin phrase _et alia_ , meaning, "and others." 
> 
> The phrase "rode hard and put up wet" is sometimes used to describe a person who has the appearance of having lived a hard, hard life. It comes from the world of horseback riding, where a well-cared-for horse is groomed after a ride, unlike one that's merely used and discarded.
> 
> It should probably be noted that experts in alcohol rehabilitation (to the best of my knowledge) would recommend six months to a year go by before the newly-sober person enters into a relationship.
> 
> At the time this was written, Geir Haarde actually was the Icelandic ambassador to the U.S. He also served as prime minister for three years, during which time the country's economy really did take a notable dive. The pictures I've seen do make him look like Stephen King's flabbier brother (sorry, ambassador). What Loki rattles off in Mr. Haare's native tongue (to the best of my faulty abilities) is: "Ambassador Haande, what a pleasure to meet such a distinguished gentleman from my country! May I introduce our host, and my dear cousin, Tony Stark? I am Loki Stark, a stranger in this land." We'll remember that, according to the biography Pepper and Natasha made up for him, Loki is supposed to be a distant mutant cousin of the Stark clan, who's come to the U.S. to participate in the family business now that anti-mutant sentiment has somewhat died down.
> 
> Harry Winston was an American jeweler known for donating the Hope and the Portuguese Diamonds to the Smithsonian. His lavish diamond pieces are often rented by celebrities for red carpet events (but I'll bet Pepper owns hers).  
>  _The Books of Faerie_ was a three mini-series spin-off of _The Books of Magic_ series written by John Ney Reiber. The _Auburon's Tale_ segment by Bronwyn Carlton featured a blue, horned Auberon (a character more familiar to most of us by the name Oberon, King of the Fairies, from Shakespeare's _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ ).
> 
> Jimmy Choo is a high-end maker of women's shoes, creating styles that are advertised as, "classically refined yet distinctly exuberant."

* * *

Tony wasn't sure whether Loki felt self-conscious, or merely meant to tantalize him a little with the promise of delights ahead. He suspected the latter, considering that his boyfriend now seemed to be recovering his sense of mischief in small but steady increments. At any rate, Loki not only refused to let Tony watch him dress, he wouldn't even give him a peek beforehand at the suit his new buddy Darius King had not merely tailored, but apparently designed especially for him.

"Never fear, best beloved, I will not merely debut at your New Year's Ball," Loki informed him, "I will _shine_."

With that promise (or possibly threat), he threw Tony a decidedly Mona Lisa-esque smile over one shoulder, then swanned off to the seclusion of his workshop, garment bag in hand.

To say Tony's curiosity was piqued would have been an understatement. Loki, he'd learned (even this recent iteration of Loki), was not without a little healthy vanity. In fact, he seemed to have recovered a good measure of his self-esteem along with his magic--or maybe when, around the same time, their relationship took a turn for the physical. A Loki properly loved, it appeared, was also a Loki happy.

It probably wasn't hurting, either, that for once Tony had forced aside his usual inclinations to hide all his more serious (and therefore dangerous) thoughts and feelings behind a high wall of snark and glibness, taking instead that giant leap of faith into actually sharing some of himself with his partner. It felt weird. It wasn't like him. It also felt- and this was the strange part- actually pretty damn amazing, like he'd started to turn into a whole person instead of a huge, alcohol-numbed ball of hurt.

True confessions time: his old ways would hardly have worked anyway, and Tony knew it. Like he'd have any luck hiding his interior life from a guy who could--literally--read his every thought.

Not that the reading was deliberate. It wasn't spying, or prying, or any other bad thing. Loki wanted to understand him, true, but that desire came with a more-or-less limitless sense of acceptance. He didn't judge. He didn't come with a pre-determined list of things that would be deal-breakers. He actually seemed to want to love Tony just as he was, foibles, quirks, inconsistencies and all, and not some idealized version he'd made up in his head about what he wanted Tony to be (to say that particular problem had cropped up once or twice with lovers in Tony's past would be a serious understatement). In turn, he wanted Tony to love him the same way.

Loki may have had a vast and unbelievably complex mind, but for all that, his needs were simple: he needed to keep busy, to be accepted as he was, to have people to care for, and to feel genuine affection from those around him. Nothing else, really, not as far as Tony had been able to make out. Assured of those things, in the past week Loki had begun to eat and sleep better, the old nightmares troubling him, it seemed, only rarely. He'd started working out with Kurt in the gym, and had even begun to train with Thor, in a playful, big brother/little brother kind of way. He spoke almost shyly, now and then, of wanting to be strong like his "brothers."

And Loki tried hard- they could all see that- maybe even harder than he should. It would have been impossible not to notice that he brought an almost unimaginable grace to even his ordinary everyday movements, and that he was clearly getting stronger, physically. It delighted Tony to watch his lover transform slowly but surely from his former frail boniness into a slender sleekness he couldn't help but find completely captivating. Loki was clever and lightning-quick, able to elude Thor, during their workouts, in ways that had Point Break doing cartoon double-takes, trying to figure out where his little bro had vanished to from one second to the next.

Whatever had made him a fighter, though, a skilled, even vicious warrior, just seemed to have gone missing, rooted out of him along with his memories. Loki enjoyed gymnastics with Kurt, running, swimming, even the aforementioned playful wrestling with Thor, but Tony never picked up from him the least sense wanting to compete, much less win. Loki was like a kid goofing off in the schoolyard, and Tony caught Thor looking at him sadly, now and then. He often wanted to ask Thor what it meant to him, wanted to know what the god of thunder might be thinking in those moments, but he always chickened out in the end.

If Thor looked unhappy, Loki seemed pretty much the opposite, more often pleased with his life, these days, than haunted or confused. The skeletal ghost with the tragic look in his eyes had been replaced by a cheerful, skinny-but-great-looking young guy with a devilish grin. Tony loved the change. He loved Loki, to an extent he wouldn't have believed possible, not holding back, not guarding his heart. The only thing he feared was that, if something happened... if something went wrong... if Loki was ever lost to him... Every time it came up, the thought struck him as unbearable. He'd never recover. Never. He couldn't even think of it without a horrible, sick feeling coming into the pit of his stomach.

Enough of that, anyway. Time to scramble back to firmer ground and root himself safely in the here-and-now. If Loki intended to shine, he could at least give a faint glimmer. Tony trimmed his beard, put a little product in his hair, pulled on his own tux (Hugo Boss, and a pretty damn fine suit, though he suspected Loki's truly would outshine it as the sun outshone the moon), retied his bow tie three times before he felt satisfied with the way it looked, and called himself done, fully aware that he looked as good as he was ever going to look. He wondered if he could get J.A.R.V.I.S. to do a little subtle spying on his behalf.

"J., old friend..." Tony began, sounding sketchy even to himself.

The A.I. shut him down fast. "No, sir," he answered sternly. "No, I refuse to be complicit in spying for you. Loki requested privacy, and I will not go against his wishes. I will not take part in spoiling the surprise. By my estimation, Loki will be fully prepared to meet you in a quarter of an hour, and you will just have to wait until then."

Tony, mature as always, stuck out his tongue at the wall.

J.A.R.V.I.S. hrumphed back at him.

After a couple minutes passed, Tony tried, "He looks that good, huh?"

J.A.R.V.I.S. laughed evilly.

Tony considered that he'd made the A.I. too intelligent. Intelligent enough to consistently get the best of him. He fidgeted his way from one of the big chairs, to the couch, to the other big chair, to the kitchen island, and back again. He tried not to crease his suit, and obsessed about his boyfriend.

Some of Darius King's looks, in his humble (or not) opinion could be very weird, others were classically elegant, the kind of elegance found in old black-and-white movies. Which style would King have picked for Loki? His boyfriend liked clothes, that was undeniable, especially elegant clothes or unique clothes, things that looked and felt good, in lush fabrics that satisfied his highly-developed sense of touch. He and Darius King- whose studio Loki now regarded as one of his "safe" places, seemed well on their way to becoming the fastest of fast friends.

Pepper had been right, too, about Loki having stellar taste in practically everything. Her decision to assign him to the Design Department, even with only the evidence of the couple days worth of work that Loki now had under his belt, was already appearing to be a genius move on Pep's part. Tony knew there was a reason he kept her around- and Pepper punched his arm (not gently, either) every time he said so.

Loki had been ecstatic about his new workshop, and his new job, and he seemed to be joyfully anticipating the classes he'd be starting in the next week, even though they meant he'd have to leave the tower for hours at a stretch. It probably didn't hurt that J.A.R.V.I.S.'s Christmas gift to him (with Tony's help and blessing) had been an ear-bee of his own, just like Tony's, so that he never felt disconnected from home. That present alone had raised Loki's spirits, and confidence, immensely.

To all appearances, Loki was now more enthused about his new life than fearful, which had the doubly positive effect of raising Tony's spirits as well. For the first time in his life, he didn't feel like he was waiting, with unnameable dread, for the awful thing ahead, waiting for the other shoe to drop and everything in his life to be torn into shreds. Most of all, he wasn't looking for the terrible ending when he'd only barely begun the adventure.

The knot he'd carried in his belly since what felt like birth magically unknotted. He felt free, his life filled with possibility. When he woke up before Loki in the pale dawn hours of morning, Tony would often just lie there on his side in their shared bed, watching his boyfriend's face and wondering what good thing he'd done, after all the difficult years, that he deserved to be so lucky.

Loki, discovering himself being stared at in the early hours, never got weirded out or angry. He'd smile his sleepy first-thing-in-the-morning smile, and reach out his hand for Tony's. They'd lie there together, holding hands, waking up to each other's faces, sublimely, ridiculously in love.

And so, when the penthouse elevator stopped at the workshop floor to pick up his handsome prince, ending his anticipation... oh, the actual fuck! Tony practically had to pick his jaw up off the floor--he was that stunned.

There weren't words. There really weren't- even if he'd spoken as many languages as Kurt did.

If Tony had been a cartoon character, his heart would have jumped a foot outside of his chest and still been thumping away like crazy, his eyes bulging out of his head. It wouldn't have been pretty.

"Loki... wow. Just wow." Tony looked his boyfriend up and down, from his shiny shoes to the top of his soft curls, not to mention the glimmering silver banding his horns. Yup, just... wow to the infinite power. "Holy shit, babe! Gotta say, you're far and away the most gorgeous thing that ever stepped onto my elevator."

Loki, fortunately, didn't jump on the opportunity to wonder how many lovers Tony had actually shared that particular elevator with, or what they'd meant to him. The answer to that particular unasked question being (except for Pepper), pretty much nothing.

"Holy shit is... the good shit?" Loki asked instead, looking slightly perplexed. He smoothed down his black velvet jacket with both hands, extending the more generalized perplexity to include his new suit. Only it wasn't so much a suit as it was... okay, regalia, or something--a black-on-black combination of vintage and modern, the jacket cut a bit like a gentleman's frock coat from olden times, worn over a swirly-patterned black silk waistcoat, black shirt and tie, and plain-but-perfectly-cut black trousers. On anyone else, maybe, the outfit might have looked a little over-the-top, or weird.

On Loki, of course, it looked amazing--making him appear less like a mutant (which, of course, he wasn't anyway) in a fantastic suit, more like... well, more like the king of some fabulous and magical realm.

The board, et al., was gonna crap themselves.

"You look extremely handsome, by the way, my beloved," Loki told Tony, almost shyly. "I feel great pride in accompanying you to this celebration. This..." He smiled at having looked for and located the right word. "This party."

"Oh, babe." Tony squeezed Loki's hand, then brought it to his mouth, delivering a kiss to the palm and, incidentally, causing the sweetest glimmer of a smile to flicker over Loki's lips.

"Ya know, it seems as if this sobriety thing might actually kind of suit me. Every time I look in a mirror I'm struck with how much less I look like I've been 'rode hard and put up wet.'"

Loki's lips parted slightly and his brows pulled together he tried to puzzle that one through. "Which is to say... you both look and feel better?"

Tony laughed. "Yeah, something like that, babe."

Loki's expression changed to one of sympathy. He draped an arm around Tony's shoulders and drew him close, kissing the top of his head, then just holding him as the elevator sped downward.

His boyfriend understood it wasn't all easy. Yes, he'd cleaned the alcohol out of Tony's system, left everything fresh and new, but that didn't mean Tony was-- _abracadabra! shazam!_ and a flick of the magic wand- no longer an alcoholic. His body maybe didn't still crave the stuff but, god, his mind sure did.

Even with Loki's constant support, and the steadfast encouragement of his friends, he still hadn't gotten over wanting a drink every time he was hit with the least bit of stress. When he was happy, he wanted a nice glass of something to celebrate. When he got tired, or down, he wanted one for comfort. Most maddening of all, he hadn't even realized what a crutch the booze had been all these years, and now he felt like an idiot. If not for Loki, the pitiful remnants of his self-esteem would have been in the toilet.

As it was, he wondered if it was possible to feel more crazy-in-love with every hour that passed. Loki did everything that could humanly (or inhumanly) be done to ease the cravings, but he was understandably slightly reluctant to root around in Tony's brain flipping switches--so instead he'd usually just offer tender, loving, joyful, mind-blowing sex. Which was definitely distracting in a good way, and nothing to be complained about. Ever.

Tony grinned up at Loki. Yeah, he had to admit--it did help. It also didn't suck to realize how absolutely _present_ he felt, how sharply aware, without the single malt hazing out his vision.

"Yes?" Loki asked.

Tony wondered how weird the look he'd been giving his boyfriend had actually been."I kinda love you, you know, Lok. You're amazing."

Loki kissed his mouth this time, pulling away, with impeccable timing, the very second the door opened to reveal the lobby, currently thronged with people and sparkling with decorations and lights in shades of pale blue and champagne, elegant as hell.

Tony, well aware of his own limitations, left all that kind of thing up to Pepper and her team.

Speaking of the devil (which she totally wasn't)... Pepper greeted them almost at once, as if she'd been lying in wait for their entrance. She had a man on her arm who slightly resembled a doughier version of the author Stephen King, and a look of determination on her pretty, and expertly made up, face.

"Loki, dear! Tony!" she called out, in her hostess-with-the-mostest voice. "I'd like to introduce you to the ambassador from Iceland."

"Pep, you look like a movie star." Tony kissed her cheek lightly.

Someone other than him, though, had apparently either done his homework, or engaged in a spot of lightning-fast mind-reading. Loki grasped the doughy man's hand firmly, looked deep into his eyes, and rattled off, " _Sendiherra Haarde, Hvílík ánægja að mæta svo frægur heiðursmaður frá heimalandi mínu! Má ég kynna gestgjafi okkar og kæru frænku mína_ , Tony Stark? _Ég er Loki Stark, útlendingur í þessu landi_."

Confronted by a mile-tall blue prince in cutting-edge couture evening attire, doughy dude looked slightly startled. Tony guessed he didn't blame him.

"Tony," Loki continued, "Please allow me to introduce Ambassador Geir Haarde."

In Tony's ear-bee, J.A.R.V.I.S. snarked, "I might debate the use of the word 'distinguished.' The man formerly served as prime minister- for only three years I might add- and nearly managed to bring his country's formerly robust economy crashing down about his ears. One can only assume his countrymen were overjoyed to see him made an ambassador, as it also allowed them to finally see the back of him."

Tony restrained himself from snickering just in time to hear Loki blithely inform the diplomat that he hailed from the north-east of their beautiful land, from the far-off town of Þórshöfn, near the Langanes peninsula, and that his father was an ornithologist, who studied the birds that nested there. He looked fully prepared to go on for hours, with incredible earnestness and detail, about the delights of the region, and to share all kinds of "fascinating" facts about the local wildlife.

That was his Loki, god of stories, telling a tale by managing not to tell a tale. No rational human being who didn't want to experience an untimely death-by-boredom would ever have chosen to follow up that particular conversational trail.

"My god, that's a remote place!" Haande said. He may have nearly destroyed his country's economy through his own incompetence, but he wasn't crazy. He so wasn't going to pursue the topic of nesting birds in back-of-beyond Iceland.

Tony shook the guy's hand (it felt sweaty, and slightly cold) and watched him pretend to spot the Norwegian ambassador across the room, using that as an excuse to beat a hasty retreat from their little group.

Pepper concealed a laugh behind her opera-gloved hand, while Loki grinned at her. She really did look like a star from the Golden Age of Hollywood Glamour that evening, elegant in a sea-green gown that brought out the fire in her red-gold hair, dangling Harry Winston earrings sparkling in her ears. Eyes followed her admiringly wherever she went, and rightly so.

"I have now exhausted every word of Icelandic I know," Loki told them. "Do you believe the ambassador of my supposed native country was impressed?" He snagged a glass of champagne off a passing waiter's tray and took a long drink. "Tony! This is delicious!"

"Sure, but remember what I said, Lok?" Tony cautioned. "About how , with all the bubbles, champagne has a way of sneaking up on you?"

"I pledge to you, Tony, I will only drink this one glass, and perhaps another, to toast the fall of midnight. I shan't shame you."

"Never even crossed my mind." Tony gave his hand a last sneaky little squeeze before their sure-to-be-Oscar-worthy performance of dashing-host-and-his-handsome-foreign-cousin began in earnest. "I just don't want you to end up feeling yucky. Champagne hangovers are hell."

"Earlier I felt quite nervous," Loki said, gazing around the crowd. "Yet now I feel excited, and as if I may well enjoy myself! I'm wearing the earpiece J. gave to me tonight, Pepper, just as you and Tony do, and dear J. has promised to help should I encounter rough conversational waters."

A second waiter brought Tony a glass of a dry sparkling cider that more-or-less resembled champagne in its color and effervescence (the entire waitstaff having been sternly ordered to serve him nothing else, no matter how he begged). Tony tucked his arm into Loki's, and sipped, and mingled, chatting on the shallowest possible level with a number of old enemies, an equal number of friendly acquaintances, their orbit intersecting with Pepper's now and then, or with one of Tony's fellow Avengers, attending that evening as a weird combination of guests, celebrities and high-powered backup to Hap's security team.

As expected, Steve-o looked heroic and upright and patriotic in uniform. Tony would have been willing to bet good money that Nat's skintight and slit-up-to-there little black number concealed at least ten deadly weapons. Clint looked like he'd rented his tux from the bargain rack of Men's Warehouse, but Tony still caught Phil sending him loving looks. Bruce wasn't there. Even putting aside the fact that he'd sometimes been known to Hulk out unexpectedly, Bruce didn't do parties. That wasn't negotiable.

Loki met the Stark Industries board of directors. He met the mayor of New York (and the more reclusive Mrs. Mayor, who was way less of a dickwad than her husband and took to the former prince of Asgard immediately). He met dignitaries, athletes, celebrities, and outshone them all--not merely because he was so tall, or so elegantly horned, or such an emphatic shade of blue. He was exactly what people mean when they said, "That person is the soul of charm and wit." He even managed to tone down his normally slightly weird vocabulary choices for the occasion.

He dazzled them, like he was fucking Auberon, King of Faerie in the comics (only a thousand times more poised and handsome), who by some whim of his own had deigned to spend the evening in their midst. The rich, the powerful, the beautiful, the famous, all ate it up like candy.

Early on, Tony questioned his own wisdom in letting his magical boyfriend go free range, but at midnight, when the ball fell in Times Square and Loki bent down to chastely kiss his cheek, the charm still held. The other guests adored him, practically worshiped him, even as midnight gave way to one A.M.

In the end you will always kneel, Tony thought--and immediately hated himself for letting the words slip into his head, his only consolation that Loki wouldn't see them as Tony harboring doubts about him, or his motives. More than that, as far as Tony knew, his boyfriend didn't have any motives, ulterior or otherwise. He wouldn't remember having spoken that particular sentence, or have the slightest idea what it meant. His ragged memories of living out in the world were filled with nothing but pain, and he just wanted people to like him.

Only, twenty yards away, surrounded by a knot of total strangers, Loki's head snapped up suddenly. He'd already started to look pale, the way he sometimes still did when he got overly tired. Now he looked like a frightened deer.

_No no no no_ , Tony tried to protest. _Loki, I didn't mean it. Or that. Whatever it was I meant. Or didn't mean. Fuck_.

Loki's interior laughter echoed hollowly inside Tony's (apparently) empty head. He watched his prince make his warm and witty apologies, and then his escape, not one of his new fans any the wiser. In Tony's eyes though, he looked like a shamed and barefoot Cinderella racing down the road in her rags, leaving behind her empty pumpkin.

Suddenly, to remain behind felt like agony. He wanted only to follow Loki, to cuddle him and comfort him, to assure him everything was okay, it was only that the throng was so obviously smitten, and it reminded him that Loki was a prince, and...

Cue Cinderella throwing her one shoe down a deep, deep well, never to be seen again.

"J.," Tony said, when he had a spare moment to mutter to what looked like himself. "Tell him something wise, please, and say it's from me?"

"He isn't angry with you," J.A.R.V.I.S. answered in his ear, sounding almost surprised (he would never allow himself to sound _actually_ surprised, that was beneath his station). "Rather, blame a surfeit of emotion and champagne. He hung up his suit neatly, showered, and put himself to bed. I believe he'll be glad when you join him. He's simply done in."

Had J.A.R.V.I.S. possessed an actual mouth, Tony would have kissed it right then and there.

"Thanks a million, J. You just made my life tolerable for the next thirty minutes, or however long it takes the rest of these assholes to haul butt out of here. Seriously, I owe you."

"Indeed," J. answered smugly. "As per usual."

Fifteen minutes later, as the wait- and catering staff began to clear the tables, and the band packed up their instruments, he and Pepper bade the stragglers goodnight and Happy New Year, Pepper holding his arm tightly. She looked tired, too- as well she might, since the lobby clock read two twenty-five A.M.

Pep sat down on one of the banquettes with a sigh, kicking off her beaded Jimmy Choo heels. "It went well this year. Don't you think it went well?"

"Guess so," Tony answered, loosening his bow tie so that the mismatched ends hung limply over his shoulders, then kicked off his own dress shoes. "Considering this is the only one I've ever done stone cold sober, and this is also the first year I have more than the haziest possible awareness of what occurred after ten p.m. Have I been acting like an asshole for as long as you've known me, Pepper?"

"Oh, Tony." Pep took his arm again. "You know I love you--no, not like that, not anymore--but I do love you. Would I say that if I thought you were an... ahem... asshole?"

"Maybe. You're an awfully nice person."

"Charmer." She laid her head on his shoulder. "I'm so glad you're happier. I'm so glad you're feeling better. Keep fighting, okay, sweetheart? I so much want everything to work out for you."

Tony rested his head against her head, closing his eyes. It felt good to just sit there for a few moments with his old friend, not needing to watch his mouth, or be _on_.

At last Pepper pulled away, bending down to pick up her shoes. Tony collected his own shoes, and together they walked barefoot to the elevator, leaning on each other a little as the lift wafted them upward. He kissed her cheek tenderly as she disembarked at her own floor, two levels beneath his own.

"Goodnight, dear friend," Pepper said softly, gave his hand a brief squeeze, then let him go.

Tony continued his journey, weary but contented, as if something had been settled that had waited a long time for resolution, and now that it was over, he could finally move forward again.

Loki wasn't in bed when he reached the bedroom, but he emerged from the bathroom about the same time Tony stripped down to his shorts. One look, and he fetched a bottle of water from the cooler, setting it on Loki's nightstand, then dug out an undershirt from his top drawer, pulled it on and crawled into bed, holding the covers up for his boyfriend to follow.

"I do _not_ like champagne," Loki told him, in tones of betrayal, sliding up beside Tony with a shiver. "I do not like it _the least bit_."

"My poor baby." Tony kissed his temple. "When you can, drink a bunch of water. You'll be glad in the morning that you did."

Loki muttered something into his shoulder that sounded vaguely like, "Ugh."

Within seconds, he was sound asleep in Tony's arms, snoring softly. Loki never snored. Tony found it kind of cute.

"I love you so much, baby," he said quietly into Loki's ear. "Do you know that you mean the world to me?"

Loki rolled over, sliding his own long arms in around Tony's waist, burying his face in Tony's chest. Tony took that as a "yes."


	2. We Are Family

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki's reading issues are solved far more easily than anticipated, but he's still nervous about starting his art classes. Also, sometimes the families we build for ourselves are the best families, as Tony discovers for himself when Kurt moves back in with him and Loki.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "We Are Family" was a big hit for Sister Sledge all the way back in 1979.
> 
> On February 2, Groundhog Day, the best-known resident of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, groundhog Punxsutawney Phil, is said to predict the coming weather by whether or not he sees his shadow. If he does, there'll be six more weeks of winter, if he doesn't, there'll be an early spring. Sadly, Phil's predictions only seem to be correct about 48% of the time.
> 
> "Hot for Teacher" is a song by Van Halen, circa 1984.
> 
> "Pleased as Punch" refers to Mr. Punch, of Punch and Judy. It's clearly a questionable form of pleasure, as in the original story line, Punch, with his tag line of "That's the way to do it!" is generally only pleased because he's beaten someone to death, the victims including his wife, his baby, a policeman, a doctor, a lawyer and the devil.
> 
> Kurt's quote is from one version of an old Breton fishermen's prayer. Those particular words are probably best known as being the ones inscribed on the plaque that sat on President Kennedy's desk in the Oval Office.

* * *

The last of their White Christmas snow had long since turned an indescribable shade of gray by the night of the Stark Industries New Year's Eve Party. During the wee hours, a so-called "warming trend" brought driving, sleety, just-above-freezing rain for New Year's itself--which in Tony's thinking was fine for a day mostly dedicated to staying home, romantically snuggling up with his sweetie, alternating snippets of football (which Loki found dull) with binge-watching classic movies on Netflix (which he most definitely didn't).

The holidays behind them, four days of the same pissy weather later, on his way back from a meeting on the East Side, his driver struggling against the crosstown traffic far less successfully than Happy generally managed, Tony decided, definitively, that spring couldn't come too early to suit him. This was one year that damn groundhog better not see his shadow.

He was well on his way to a snit (as he sat in the back of his cushy towncar with his StarkPad and a big cup of perfect coffee) when he noticed the pedestrians all around him with their hoodie-strings pulled tight against the nasty weather, or with their umbrellas blasting inside out, dumping their collected rainwater all over everyone's heads, and remembered that the reason Hap wasn't driving him today was that he was out in this shit with Loki, helping him learn to ride the subway.

 

Back at the tower, Tony felt almost irrationally pleased to find the two subway wanderers had managed to beat him home.  Loki's hair was still damp, drying into tight little curls. Tony had long suspected the industrial-strength product that Happy put into his hair had the power to repel all liquids. Mere rainwater couldn't penetrate it. You could probably pour full-strength hydrochloric acid on that shit and not detect the least sign of meltage.

Tony's happiness only increased when he noticed Kurt perched, with his usual perfect balance, on the back of one of the dining room chairs. Pepper, Happy and Loki occupied three of the others. Someone had propped a mirror on the table, and all around the base was scattered a larger-than-you-might-expect pile of what appeared to be glasses--the kind for wearing and seeing, rather than the kind for drinking.

Speaking of drinking, Tony hadn't quite been able to break himself of the habit of having a glass of something when he got home, but in this case he made it a pomegranate Italian soda in a wineglass. Okay, it wasn't Glenmorangie (and, gods how he wanted the Glenmorangie), but it also wasn't going to destroy his newly-shiny liver. He'd focus on the color and pretend to be drinking red wine, like the sophisticated metropolitan gentleman he was.

Glass in hand, he wandered back to the table.

"Whatcha doin', guys?"

Kurt grinned at him. "Remember how we thought Loki's difficulty relearning his reading skills was the result of his brain injury, and Hank intended to do more testing after the holidays?"

"Yeah..." Tony replied cautiously. He actually remembered hearing something about that, just not the particulars. "Was I sober, and/or listening at the time you mentioned it to me?"

"Most likely neither," Loki sassed, then stepped on Kurt's punchline by informing Tony, "Upon my mentioning I found yours helpful, Kurt administered a seeing-test and found I merely needed spectacles! It has been a case of ignoring the simplest solution because it seemed too simple. My dear friend Darius has loaned me these to try, from his eyewear collection."

Tony hauled a stool over from the kitchen island. Loki was currently wearing a pair with coppery metal bits and a certain amount of tortoiseshell in the frame. It appeared he belonged to that group of people who actually looked even hotter in a nice pair of glasses, as opposed to people like himself, who mostly just looked like enormous dweebs.

"I like the ones you're wearing," he told Loki. "You look like a sexy history professor. I also now have " _Hot for Teacher_ " running through my head."

"Had you many blue professors when you pursued your education, Tony?" his boyfriend teased back.

"I don't know about that, Lok. I certainly had a few horny ones."

Loki laughed. "I understand what you did, beloved! You juxtaposed the diverse meanings of 'horned' and 'horny' to comic effect!"

Well, it was at least a step further along the road than Thor's understanding of Midgardian humor, at least right up there with Steve's declarations of, "I understood that reference!" Besides, Loki looked so damn pleased with himself, which Tony found cuter than hell.

His boyfriend hit him next with one of his heart-melting grins. "I'm happy, also, that there was a simple solution to my inability to master my lessons. All of you tried so industriously to teach me to read, and I understood your frustration when only Happy seemed to succeed in the endeavor. But that was only because the signs he showed me--not to say that Happy was not an excellent teacher--were distant, far from my eyes, while your menus and books and screens were close. Now I'll learn quickly, and not be a burden. I would never wish to bring trouble to your door, beloved," Loki told him, so earnest Tony wasn't sure if he wanted to laugh or cry.

"Babe, you are no trouble, ever." Tony reached out, taking Loki's hand. "Keep that in mind, okay?"

Happy beamed at them both. He was always such a sap, the kind of guy who shed big salty tears during Hallmark Christmas commercials, that giant, soft heart of his one of the things, truth be told, Tony liked best about him.

If anything Loki's grin got even more gorgeous. He glanced around the table. "How fortunate I am to start a new year and a new life with such excellent friends! I love all of you immensely- and you also, J., though you are not able to sit with us here. Yet you contain us and shelter us, and I feel safe, as I suspect I have never felt in my life. Thank you for your care, and thank you, Tony, most especially, for giving me this life." He looked down at his and Tony's joined hands, adding softly. "To be lost and alone in a strange world is a terrible thing. May none of us know such times again, ever, so long as we may live."

Loki's usually mobile mouth had drawn itself into a straight, hard, thin line, and the glasses hid his downcast eyes.

Pepper and Tony's eyes met.  Pep's lips shaped the words, _He knows_.

Tony didn't doubt for a second that Loki had lost almost everything he'd ever known: Asgard, his childhood, his family--good and bad--all he'd learned, his command of any magic that wasn't purely instinctual, battles, campaigns, loves, hates... Every single thing that had made up the Loki who'd once been had been demolished by the monster Odin planted in his brain, leaving nothing but scattered, isolated images and a few lingering wisps of emotion. The nightmare he'd suffered, though, living alone and without shelter in Manhattan's cold streets--at least some of that was still there, making Loki weep sometimes in his dreams, or call out, making him now and then want to huddle, all by himself, in a thick sweater or blanket, as if he'd never be warm again.

"Oh, honey, honey." Pepper darted around the table, bundling him up in her arms. Though a warm, friendly, and social woman, Pep wasn't what Tony had ever thought of as over-the-top demonstrative, much less the motherly type. Somehow, with his boyfriend, that all changed. Or maybe part of Pepper had always been that way. It wasn't for nothing she was "Pepper," instead of Virginia, her given name. She didn't love quickly or easily, but when she did love, she loved fiercely, no holds barred.

Loki hugged her in return, his face relaxing again to its former peaceful expression, though he still appeared slightly shaken by the flood of memory and feeling. He patted Pep's back, universal signal for, _You can let go now, I'm okay_.

"I am very well," he said quietly. "Please forgive me."

"Nothing to forgive, buddy," Happy told him. He might have been talking to one of his young nephews instead of a former god of ancient days. Hap didn't really tend to consider such things.

Loki's smile went through a forced change, turning mischievous. Clearly a change of subject was in order. "Happy has a date tonight, Tony, with a minion of the Icelandic ambassador, who he met at your grand party to usher in the turning of the year."

Happy instantly turned beet-red, though he still seemed pleased as Punch with himself. "Yup, sure do! Speaking of which, do we have some winners in all these, kiddo? 'Cause I gotta go make myself handsome for my girl." Hap squeezed Loki's shoulder- usually a bone-crushing thing where Happy was concerned, but with Loki he was tender.

"These." Loki indicated the copper pair he was wearing. "These." A blue pair that almost matched his skin, with touches of silver. "And these, perhaps?" The third choice was a retroish pair with plain black wire rims and small oval lenses. "Would you, Happy, at your convenience, convey the rest back to Darius with my warmest thanks? I have told him I will report, as agreed, for the photographs tomorrow, directly after my class, but would not bear them with me, lest they come to harm in my backpack."

"You got it, Lok. I'll drop them off on my way." He gave Loki's shoulder another squeeze. "Love ya too, kid."

"And remember," Loki said sternly. "No champagne on this date. It is a evil beverage."

"I won't forget." Chuckling, Happy gathered the rejected glasses into a case, tucked the case under his arm, and ambled away.

Pepper glanced at her phone for the time. "Oops, me too, I'm afraid. Time to make myself handsome."

"You too?" Tony asked, his curiosity piqued. "Anyone I know?"

"You could say that," Pepper answered, but she didn't clarify, only gave Tony's cheek a brief kiss, then Loki's, accepted a tail-caress from Kurt and was on her way, swinging her kicked-off heels from two fingers. The jauntiness of that little walk got Tony's curiosity revving higher than ever.

Then it was just the family, so to speak, Tony and his two blue guys. His two amazing blue guys.

The air smelled warmly and deliciously of simmering chili, and maybe even cornbread baking in his much-neglected oven, and Tony didn't even care that J.A.R.V.I.S. had that emo-y modern folk-rock Bon Iver-type shit Loki and Kurt both seemed to like so much playing on low volume in the background. The penthouse felt right again, the way things hadn't quite when Kurt was away. It felt exactly like home.

"I'm glad you're back," Tony told his German friend, after Loki switched out the copper glasses for the little black ones (no living being should have looked as adorable in those glasses as his boyfriend managed to look in them) and began to wander around the penthouse, randomly examining a variety of things close up, just because he could. "Loki missed you bunches," Tony added.

Kurt grinned at him, that warm, sweet, merry Kurt grin Tony himself had missed like crazy. "I wanted you to know, Tony. that I've taken a leave of absence from the school. One of our former students is coming back to assume my place. I've been accepted to the Weill Cornell Medical College, over on the East Side. Hank's on the Board there, though the privilege of being the first openly mutant student is all mine."

The face Kurt made, along with his little shrug, said it all. _Should be interesting_ , that look told him.

Kurt had lived through a lot of "interesting" in his life. If you were Kurt, that particular brand of "interesting" most likely sucked more often than not, often in major ways--but the German was also one of the bravest men he knew, and if Kurt couldn't open a few closed minds, who else on Earth possibly could?

"Well, congrats and best of luck to you! Dr. Wagner does have kind of a ring to it. Do you still plan to commute from Salem Center, or...?"

"There's an apartment building close by, owned by the Xavier Institute. I might stay there." Kurt grinned again, clearly teasing him. "Unless something else comes up."

"Smartass. You're fucking staying here, Kurt. That's not even open to discussion. Take your old room. Hell, take a luxury suite, we have one or two to spare. Whatever suits you."

"My old room, then." Kurt reached across the table, laying his hand over Tony's.

Tony felt the power in the touch of those two strong fingers and thumb, and the tenderness, the affection. He discovered he could read Kurt's eyes after all, and see the same things in their warm golden light.

"It's not just for Loki, you know," Tony said.

"I know," Kurt answered. "Tony, I know."

"The chili smells almost ready, ja?" he added, a moment later. "I understand it's good for a family to all sit down at the table together."

"I've heard that too," Tony answered. "And, hey, consider this--what about adaptive tech for your hands, for school, I mean? 'Cause I can totally do adaptive tech..."

Kurt smiled at him in the exact way Thor often smiled at Loki these days, and Loki smiled at Thor.

"You show your love by making things," he said, thoughtfully. "Tony, have you noticed? Loki is the same way."

"I'll set the table for us all." Loki strayed happily back into the kitchen, his new glasses pushed up haphazardly onto the top of his curly hair. "Did you know things are lovely when one can see them properly?"

 _Yes_ , Tony thought, _Yes, when you can finally see them properly, there's nothing in the world more beautiful_.

 

Tony woke the next morning to an empty space beside him, and a thin sliver of gray January light showing at the edge of the blackout curtain. Loki, it appeared, had gotten up to read by this meager light, a thin, battered paperback clutched in his elegant hands. He was crying.

Tony got up immediately, padding across the carpet in his bare feet. His boyfriend didn't even seem to notice--he was too engrossed, between pushing up his glasses to dry his eyes on the sleeve of his pj's, and with whatever was going on in his book.

They'd gone to bed at the same time, but overnight, it seemed, Loki's reading had progressed to at least middle-school level, at least that was how old Tony had been when he read the same book Loki was reading now, _A Wrinkle in Time_ , by Madeline L'Engle. His eleven-year-old self had spent half the story devastated by the events described in those pages, the other half wishing he could be part of the heroine's quirky, brilliant family.

"Hey, babe." Tony used his thumb to brush aside the latest accumulation of tears. "What's up? Are you okay?"

Loki startled violently, then laughed at his own reaction. "Oh! Tony! Forgive me, I was lost in this other place. It is a wonderful magic, is it not, to be able to spin out one's words to create a world? I have such fellow-feeling for Meg, who thinks herself so dim-witted and dull, yet strives so mightily for all she holds dear."

"You're anything but dim-witted and dull, Lok."

"But perhaps we are all, in a part of our selves, Meg, or Jay Gatsby, or Hamlet, all these so-real people who never were, and that is why we hold them so dear. They allow us to recognize, and care for, those untended bits of our natures."

"Somebody woke up philosophical."

Loki smiled, wiped his eyes one last time, and put the paperback aside. "I'm afraid I didn't sleep. My stomach felt very strange. I gave it warm milk, but that made the strangeness only a little less, and if my mind was not immersed in a book it seemed prone to wander away into nervous thought. I repacked my bag for school three times before J. told me I must stop, and even his playing of music or the soothing quality of his voice as he read to me could not quiet my thoughts."

"They call that weird feeling 'butterflies in the stomach,' Lok."

"Who does?"

"Pardon?"

"Who calls the feeling by that name? Butterflies are lovely afloat within the air, but I find the thought of them scritching and fluttering within me most disconcerting."

Tony tried his hardest not to laugh. "You know, if you put it that way, babe, I totally see your point."

"I rather feel as if I want to vomit. I think it best, that if I intend to ride the subway, I not attempt any breakfast."

"You're that nervous, Lok?"

Loki nodded mutely, and Tony guessed he could kind of see his point when it came to that, too. On his first day of kindergarten, walking alongside Jarvis (but not hand-in-hand, because Howard would not approve), he'd been so scared he'd nearly peed himself, and while Loki was an adult (more or less), this was, to all intents and purposes, his first day of school--at least that he remembered. Besides, although people were probably equally shitty, all those years ago when he was five, he hadn't enjoyed the added burden of starting school while blue, much less with dramatically spiraled horns.

On the other hand, Loki was starting art classes. Chances were his fellow artists would think he was amazing, and his worst hardship would be having to pose for countless other students' drawings.

"They'll love you," Tony told him. "I love you. You'll come in tonight with a million stories about how amazing it was, laughing at your own nerves."

Those big green eyes turned up to him with a complete deer-in-the-headlights look, making Tony feel slightly desperate.

"Have you had your shower yet?" He said, as kind of a last-ditch effort. "You could come in with me. That might be relaxing."

Loki rose dramatically, looking slightly martyred, but he did follow Tony into the bathroom, where it turned out that half an hour with the two of them and lots of soapy, slippery naked skin were pretty much just what the doctor ordered for Loki's near-panic. Loki was always so tactile, so responsive to touching and being touched. He loved the warm water, and the bubbles, running his hands over Tony's slick skin as Tony stroked and teased his. The Loki Tony released into the world may have been slightly languid with hot water and satiety, but he certainly wasn't sick with stress.

Dressed, he also looked like some kind of rock 'n' roll god with his motorcycle boots and black skinny jeans, his white tee and leather jacket and the silver bands Darius King had made for him shining on his horns.

"Beware world!" Kurt said, leaning on the kitchen island for a better view as Loki scooped up his backpack and portfolio and swanned out the door.

"Our baby's left the nest!" Tony mock-wept, wringing his hands facetiously--though now Loki's sick-with-nervousness feeling seemed to have jumped ship into his own belly. The classes, when all was said and done, had been his gift. His gift, his responsibility. Sure, Loki knew how to use his phone and had his J.A.R.V.I.S.-bee in his ear. He'd logged in hours of practice in riding the subway with Happy, he'd memorized the signs to look for, how to get to Brooklyn, then back to Darius King's Manhattan studio, then all the way safely home, but still... If anything went wrong, anything at all, he'd feel responsible.

Horribly, miserably responsible.

Loki, as far as he was concerned, had suffered enough for a lifetime. And the world outside their doors...

Tony couldn't think about it. He couldn't.

"'O God, thy sea is so great,'" Kurt quoted quietly, "'And my boat is so small.'"

"Not helping, fuzzy!" Tony whimpered. " _So_ not helping."


	3. School Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki begins his first art class.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes Interesting butterfly factoid: butterflies actually have two sets of eyes, a single pair (the ocelli, mostly used to detect light brightness) and a compound pair. The multifaceted compound eyes provide the butterfly's main eyesight, as the ocelli are unable to focus on objects. 
> 
> American visual effects artist Raymond Frederick "Ray" Harryhausen created the type of stop-motion animation known as "Dynamation." His greatest hits include _Mighty Joe Young_ (1949), winner of an Oscar for Best Visual Effects, his first color film, _The 7th Voyage of Sinbad_ (1958), and 1963's _Jason and the Argonauts_ (sword-fighting skeletons, yay!).
> 
> William Butler Yeats's powerful sonnet, _Leda and the Swan_ (1933) tells the story of the human girl Leda's rape by Zeus (in the form of a swan) and draws a direct connection between that act of violence and the violence of the Trojan War. Helen of Troy, "the face that launched a thousand ships," was a child of the union. The lyric Loki quotes comes from the song " _Mother of Violence_ " from Peter Gabriel's second album, circa 1978.
> 
> The entire quote is " _As flies to wanton boys are we to th' gods, They kill us for their sport._ " (King Lear Act 4, scene 1).
> 
> Mr. Tobit's "immortal sage" is Yoda, and the entire quote is " _Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter._ "
> 
> When a dandelion flower has become downy and suitable for blowing, it's called a "dandelion clock" - it seems there's an children's game that involves blowing the seeds to tell the time, but it's apparently so old it predates even my ancient childhood.

* * *

Loki began his train ride trying to concentrate on the soothing music J. played for him through his ear-bee, holding fast to the metal pole as the car whooshed and swayed through tunnels and round dark corners.  However, he quickly became diverted. Nobody seemed to pay much attention to him, studiously minding their own businesses, and Loki took care not to make his own attention to others obvious, but he found them all so _interesting_.

There were so many people, so many different _types_ of people, in their attire, in the languages they spoke (or even the way they spoke English, the common tongue of this part of Midgard), in the shades and shapes of their features. He'd have liked to draw every one of them, and he attempted to commit as many faces to memory as he possibly could. Before Loki knew it, his journey to Brooklyn had ended, and he emerged into the light of day at his correct stop, just as he and Happy had practiced. The walk from the subway stop to the site of his first lesson comprised six of those units of distance called "blocks," not at all a difficult journey.

This part of the city (this _borough_ , as Tony called it--Loki liked the word, the shape and flavor of it in his mouth, round and fuzzy-feeling, like an apricot), this Brooklyn--or, at least, the part of Brooklyn where the school ( _his_ school) lay, seemed quieter than the portion of Manhattan where he lived with Tony, Kurt and J., the streets more tree-lined, the many shops smaller, quainter, less grand than those surrounding his tower home. There appeared to be residences, as well, of only two or three stories, with iron railings and short, steep flights of steps leading up to their doors.

He experienced only one difficult time (and that was such a small difficulty it scarcely bore mentioning), when he passed what appeared to be a school for the young, where children were outside, at play behind a fence of iron mesh.

Some amongst the boys called out him, "Yo! Yo, blue dude!" and other remarks, some rather uncouth. Yet, Loki saw, their minds held no true malice. In the end, they were only young and intrigued by that which was new to their experience.

The attention made him slightly nervous, yet he called out, "good morning!" and raised a hand in greeting, passing by the playground by without further incident. The nervousness inside him grew, though, as Loki counted off the blocks and the school grew near.

The collection of buildings was not actually a school in the purest sense, as the staid red-brick edifice outside which the children played had been. Once, Happy had told him, the place had been a station for the trains that traveled from state to state up and down the eastern seaboard, and even across the vast American land, bearing Midgardians, bearing also the many goods that fed and clothed, entertained and fueled the great city. Now weeds and tough grasses grew between the disused tracks, paths of concrete had been laid down, and the former depot (another word Loki enjoyed--it sounded to him of busy conveyances coming and going, as the trains themselves had once come and gone) housed the studios and workshops of artists and artisans, much like the workshop Loki and Thor now shared within the tower, theirs just across the corridor from Tony's workshop, and also from the laboratory where Tony and Bruce together often worked (mostly, on the whole, to make things either burn or explode, then to laugh uproariously about the mishap, was Loki's impression).

Other spaces within the far-flung complex had been converted into classrooms, where students such as himself came to learn their craft. Today was Loki's drawing class. His portfolio held a large pad of newsprint. His backpack, along with his water-bottle and the snacks Kurt had packed for him, held charcoal and pencils, erasers and fixative. He knew he would be required to look at certain mundane objects and draw them as he saw them, the teacher examining what he'd drawn to say where he'd gone wrong.

 _What if I see them incorrectly?_  Loki fretted, his stomach like a small, hard ball inside him.  _What if I find myself incapable as seeing as the Midgardians see?_

_What if I seem **weird**?_

Kurt had told him he shouldn't worry, that art was _meant_ to be entirely subjective and individual, that the greatest artists were those who stood apart from their peers, who saw things others did, or could not see. He'd used pictures from the large, beautiful book of modern art Pepper had given Loki to illustrate the truth of his words.

Loki, however, remained afraid. His horned head felt very far removed from the toes of his boots, and he still felt sick, as he had all through the night, the butterflies scritching and flapping madly within his tight-drawn stomach. 

Weird?  Of course the others would think him weird.  _Look_ at him.

Loki moaned, trying to keep the sound small, contained within himself, summoning all he possessed of courage merely to keep himself from turning tail and fleeing from the place.

"Turning tail," however, made Loki think of Kurt, who possessed both such a magnificent tail and such boundless confidence in him.

He wouldn't flee.  He couldn't.  How could he disappoint his dear friend?

Loki had arrived quite early, afraid to catch a later train lest he became confused, as he sometimes did when his nerves overcame him, lost his way, and found it necessary to retrace his steps in order to find his way properly to his intended destination. As he had _not_ lost his way, he found himself in the designated classroom, currently empty of all occupants, more than half an hour before his time.

Instead of chairs, the high-ceilinged chamber (by all appearances a place in which the passengers of the past had once waited to board their trains, at least it resembled such places in the black-and-white films he'd watched with Kurt), held many odd little benches, each arranged at a slight angle around a central pedestal, like the tick-marks indicating minutes that sometimes bordered the faces of analog clocks. Each bench bore a large easel bolted to its end. The pedestal, Loki assumed, was where the teacher would arrange the assemblage of objects the students were to draw once the class began.

Loki worked out, more by trial and error than anything else, that one was meant to sit astride the benches, rather as if riding a very small pony, not sideways as one would sit upon an ordinary chair, and he chose one tilted so that he might easily look along his left shoulder toward the pedestal as he drew with his now-dominant left hand. He drank water from his bottle, then began to arrange his supplies, clipping his pad of paper to the easel, arranging pencils and charcoal sticks, eraser and sharpener in the tray.

Quickly, he texted Tony and Kurt, thumbs trembling as he typed:  _I have arrived safely at the school_. From Tony he received the symbol of a heart. Kurt, who was most likely, at that hour, busy with a class of his own at his school of medicine, and not regarding his phone, sent him nothing--yet Loki could feel the presence and warmth of him within his own mind, comforting as when Kurt's strong hand rested upon his shoulder, calming him and lending him strength.

Loki shifted on his bench.  Light shone down through the milky glass of the triple dome far overhead, a curious blue-white light that made Loki imagine himself adrift alone amongst the clouds.  No one else had yet entered the room, and a glance at his phone revealed that scarcely five minutes had passed since he'd first entered the classroom. He drank again from his water-bottle, breathed deeply, in the slow, measured way Kurt had taught him, to restore some semblance of calm.

Since he was here, and prepared, Loki decided, he might as well draw a little on his own as he waited, both to pass the time and to further quiet his nerves. He rarely thought when he drew, much less _overthought_ , and at the moment he far preferred that to allowing himself to stew further in his own anxiety.

Loki had researched his supposed native country of Iceland, so as not to be caught wanting if questioned closely about his origins. In the course of this, he'd studied the many images of that wild and beautiful land,  images projected by J. onto the blank white wall of his bedroom. He drew one of those images now--a harsh plain covered over with rough and hardy vegetation, mountains in the distance. When this was accomplished, a quarter hour had passed, but he still sat alone in the classroom.

Loki poured strong ginger-honey tea from his flask into the attached cup, sipping it slowly in hopes of quelling the misery in his stomach. With his left hand, the one not holding the cup, he quickly sketched a mad-looking butterfly, made huge by perspective, into the foreground of his drawing. He'd added pattern to the wings, joints to the legs, and was working upon the intricate detail of a compound eye when he felt a brief touch to his shoulder.

Loki startled violently, slooping tea over his hand and sleeve.

"Sorry! Oh, god, I'm sorry!" a young woman exclaimed, snatching a voluminous scarf from around her neck and starting to mop him in a slightly frenzied fashion.  "So sorry!  I'm basically the clumsiest person in the history of _ever_ , and I'd just wondered if you were the teacher.  And, uh..."  She gestured with the now damp scarf.  "Tidal wave.  By the way, that drawing's amazing!"

Loki shook his head, unable to speak for the moment.

"I get that way to.  So into it." She swung one sturdy leg astride a bench just beside his, seated herself, and began to arrange her own paper and tools. "Literally.  You could run a Chinese New Years parade through my studio.  I'd be clueless.  Also, after creating the tea-luge, I don't mean to seem like I'm creeping on you after scaring you half to death."

"Creeping...?" Loki ventured.  _Tea-luge?_ he wondered, but thought it best not to display his ignorance.  He'd tried hard to add to his English vocabulary, but knew it still lacked, and lacked badly.

"You know.  By setting up right next door."  She smiled, her face merry and round-cheeked beneath a veritable stormcloud of shining black hair.  Her dark eyes were of the sort that is said to "twinkle," which Loki understood to mean that such eyes were of notable brightness, surrounded by pleasing lines.  Looking upon such a face, he could not hope but feel cheered.

"Tea-luge!" Loki exclaimed suddenly.  "A deluge of tea?"

His companion smiled again and Loki, unable to quite help himself, ventured timidly into the approaches of her mind--not to read thoughts, only to get the slightest feel for who she was, if she could be friendly to one such as he, if she could be trusted to be friendly.

The image she returned to him was of a garden, bright and fragrant, alive with the hum of bees.  There could scarcely have been anything more comforting.

 _Nine bean-rows will I have there_ , Loki thought, the words coming suddenly into his head, words from a poem J. had spoken for him, which Loki had particularly enjoyed.

... _a hive for the honey-bee;  
And live alone in the bee-loud glade._

 _And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,_  
_Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;_  
_There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,_  
_And evening full of the linnet’s wings._

The young woman's face took on an odd look, almost as if she listened to music, faintly played, that came to her from far, far away.  "Do you know..." she began, shifting slightly on her bench.  It's the weirdest thing..."  She shook her head, black locks snaking.  "I just had  _The Lake Isle of Innisfree_ pop into my head.  In its entirety.  Written in Spencerian copperplate.  Honestly.  You ever have things like that happen to you?"  She laughed suddenly.  "The works of William Butler Yeats, courtesy of the gods.  Am I seriously the only one this happens to?"

 " _'As flies to wanton boys are we to th' gods,'"_ "Loki quoted, which were words of the Midgardian poet (Thor would most likely have said _skald_ ), called by some "The Bard."  He reached out, not a difficult reach for him, with his long arms and large hands, brushing the worn wood (simultaneously satiny and splintery) of her bench with his fingertips. "The position we have--it's a good position for the left-handed," he told her.

To his surprise he sounded cordial--no, more than cordial, _friendly_ \--and exactly like himself, his voice perfectly normal.  Less than an hour before, Loki would scarcely have believed such a thing possible.

"By the way, how did you...?"  The young woman laughed again suddenly, holding up her left hand, along its edge, on the side of her smallest finger, lay a long blue-gray smudge of ink and graphite. "Oh. Right. Gotcha.  The tell-tale sign."

Loki held up his own edge-smudged hand, silver-gray with dust from his pencil, then held out his right hand, as Tony and Kurt had taught him. "I am Loki Stark."

"Athena Gravas." She shook with him in a friendly manner, though her slight smile told him that perhaps the gesture was too formal for such a greeting. Like Pepper's, her hands were large for a woman's, her grip firm. She possessed hair truly as black, and nearly as curly as his own, the strands now levitating round her head in mad spirals. Her eyes were the color of the strong black coffee Tony liked to drink, warmth and kindness under their twinkle.

"We gods have to stick together, right?" she added.

"Though you, I believe, are a wise and good god, and I am... not so much," Loki answered, having recognized (only in the nick of time), that his new acquaintance must be making a jest about their names, that the vehement protest, _I am not a god!_ wishing to push its way past his lips would only be perceived as... well... entirely weird, perhaps even weirder than he'd originally feared.

His moment of tenseness passed entirely, though, when Athena gave him her warm and merry smile again.

"Hey, if you ask me, Loki got a bum rap," she said. "Sorry. Total mythology geek here. My grandpa used to work for Ray Harryhausen- you know him? the stop-motion creature guy, back in the day? Gramps had this apartment full of shoebox-sized Medusas and Pegasuses and Midgard Serpents and shit, all the stuff he'd sculpted for Mr. Harryhausen, and I _loved_ them, like, _really_ loved them, so he'd tell me all the stories..." Her voice drifting off, Athena gave Loki a swift, appraising glance.

Loki raised his brows, waiting.

For the first time, Athena appeared slightly nervous.  "Okay, let me show you something--only please don't laugh. I warned you, I'm the geekiest geek who ever geeked." She pulled a StarkPhone from her canvas bag, the kind of bag with a large front flap, the sort Tony referred to as a "messenger bag."  Her thumb skimmed rapidly across the screen, presumably to sift through its images. "Okay, here. I'm actually, by totally weird coincidence..."

Athena held up the phone. On the screen reared a silver-white horse with a black mane and tail. A horse with eight legs.

Something within Loki's chest hurt, and hurt badly, though he couldn't understand the reason.

Perhaps _why_ of that pain lay within his broken memories.

It was only a story, wasn't it?  _Only_ a story.

"It's part of a series I'm working on," Athena told him, with a small, nervous laugh. "Loki's Children."

Loki wanted, badly, to touch the screen, though he knew that to do so might disrupt the image, and also that there was nothing, truly, there to touch. His mind fought and fought for memory, _any_ memory, but spilled out only emotion in its place, though he repeated the words  _only a story, only a story_ to himself like a mantra.

"Sleipnir," he found himself saying at last, nearly moaning, as salt prickled his eyes. "Sleip..."

"Yeah. _Yeah!_ And I can't believe you know him--though seeing as how your name's Loki, I guess you would, if anyone did." Underneath her excitement, and her light words, though, the deep river of Athena's kindness, it appeared, ran strong and true.  Her hand rested on Loki's wrist, sending warmth up his arm, across his chest.

"I call myself a mixed media artist," she continued, equally warm color rising up her cheeks.  "But I'm really a sculptor more than anything else. I can't draw for shit, hence this class." Still blushing, she blanked the phone's screen.

"The work is beautiful," Loki told her.  Truly."

"Are you okay, Loki?" Athena gave his wrist a light squeeze.

"I..." Loki struggled to collect himself, to spin out a plausible lie. "I grew up in a remote part of Iceland, speaking little but Icelandic, with few people around me, and have lived in this great city only a very short time. Please forgive me, that at times I become nervous. Also, the story of Sleipnir... it is a very sad story."

"I guess..." Athena regarded him a long while, and though the expression in her great dark eyes was not easy for Loki to read, it never became less than entirely kind. "To be honest, I guess I never thought of that," she said, at last. "It's always kind of presented as a funny story, isn't it? But, really, I guess it wouldn't be, not if it happened to you. Funny haha to your enemies, maybe, if you had especially nasty enemies."

"There never was a great horse to help the builder," Loki said, hoping Athena would understand what he meant, the cruelty that lay at the heart of the tale.  He remembered _none_ of it, except as something acquired in the course of his learning, a tale repeated to him in J.'s calm voice.  It wasn't _his_ memory--but still his heart hurt him. "Builder and stallion were one, as god and mare were one," he finished softly, his throat tight.

Athena's expression turned thoughtful. "But that would mean... Sleipnir was really a _boy_ , inside there, is that what you're saying? A boy forced to live as an animal, and Odin, the wise Allfather...?" She shuddered suddenly.

"Decreed this should be so. Yes."

Athena appeared upset then, and Loki feared he'd offended her.

"It _is_ a sculpture of great beauty," he said, trying to remedy his error.

"It's fine," she said, with a dismissive gesture. "Fine. A pretty sculpture of a horse with extra legs, because I didn't understand the story. Now I do. God, Loki, thank you so much! Thank you! That's what I needed, what I was looking for. It's like... to return to Yeats for a minute... Like that poem about Leda and the swan? It just opens up the whole thing and turns it on its head."

" _'A shudder in the loins engenders there_ ,'" Loki quoted, from yet another poem J. had told him, knowing exactly what Athena meant.

 _The broken wall, the burning roof and tower_  
_And Agamemnon dead._

"God, _yes_ , that's what I'm saying! It wasn't Loki being just evil that brought Ragnarok, it was Sleipnir enslaved, Fenrir in chains, Jörmungandr and Hela exiled... that's what turns mischief into malice and causes the world to end."

Loki felt the heat in his cheeks, his turn to blush had come to him. His emotions, all jumbled together without order or reason, confused him. He liked Athena extremely, both in her cleverness and her passion, the way she seemed to care so much about events that held meaning for him, although to them both they could only ever be stories and, even for him, no longer memories- but this mixed with Loki's anxiety, his feeling that he must always, figuratively, walk a tightrope, and never reveal too much of himself.

"Yet let me ramble, actually get what the hell I'm rambling about, and don't think I'm a freak. Loki, I could kiss you!"

"No kissing in my classroom, thank you!" said the one who must, in fact, be their _actual_ teacher, laughing merrily as he strolled into the classroom. "There are, moreover, _no_ freaks in here.  To quote the words of the immortal sage, ' _Luminous beings are we_.'" 

The teacher was a small man, small and interestingly old, his round face covered with skin like pink paper that had been crushed into a ball, then spread flat again, keeping all its intricate creases and wrinkles. White hair, downy as a dandelion clock wafted gently around his head. "Everyone, please," he continued, "Find a bench and organize your materials. For anyone who may have become confused by the mad rabbit warren that is this school, my name is Harold Tobit and you've found your way to Beginning Drawing."

Two of the students assembled their things with haste, muttered apologies, and quickly left. Loki thanked his stars he had not found himself in their number.

"Very well, that aside..." Mr. Tobit looked slowly round the circle of remaining students, his pale blue eyes crinkling at their corners.

Loki found himself amused that the man had nearly the same accent he did, the intonation he'd learned from listening to the sound of White Loki's voice inside Thor's head, the accent Kurt called "British Received Pronunciation."

Mr. Tobit set a single large and luxuriantly foliaged pineapple down in the center of the pedestal. "Annnnd... ready, steady, draw!"

Self-conscious, cheeks warm, Loki flipped his pad of paper over to a clean page, uncomfortably aware that Mr. Tobit had come round behind him and peered closely at his earlier doodling. Concentrating on the sweet yellow scent of the fruit, on its fibrous leaves and prickly skin, he allowed his hand its freedom, his mind to slip free of its ordinary constraints--all the worries, all the need to do things properly, as others did them.

He quickly sketched in the shape of the fruit:  the oblong body, the upright leaves, the dry little frill of smaller leaves at the base, the diamond markings, russet and coffee-brown, like scales, on its skin.

Mr. Tobit, Loki was now only marginally aware, moved about the space, hands behind his back, the steps of his small feet making a dry, whispery sound on the tiled floor. Here and there he made a quiet comment, such as, "Remember, it's not only a matter of shape. There's dimension, lighting, texture, meaning..."

 _Has a pineapple meaning?_ Loki wondered briefly, but before long the drawing drew him even deeper, as his drawings always tended to, into almost a state of waking dream, while the surface of his mind considered the stories J. had told him, of sea-captains, ocean voyages, tropical islands and the long, cold journeys home to the northern berths of those world-traveling sailing ships. Tales of pineapples staked to gateposts as a sign of welcome and a message of safe return, a promise of tales to come...

"Pencils down," Mr. Tobit instructed, from somewhere miles away. "Tall lad with the horns, you as well."

Loki startled, just as he had when Athena surprised him, the pencil leaping from his fingers, rolling halfway across the space until it came to a stop nearly at the toes of his teacher's minute wing-tip shoes. He would have given five years of his life to call the pencil back to himself again, but he knew far better than to do so.

Kurt had warned him.

"We don't show our abilities in public, Loki," he'd said.  "Only those an ordinary human might reasonably learn to do by practice and skill. For me..."  Here he'd smiled, fangs just peeping out over the smooth indigo of his lower lip.  "That means I may perform my acrobatics, fly on the trapeze, walk the tightrope--humans do these things, and do them well, and if I do them better, still it isn't questioned. Humans do not walk on walls. Humans do not teleport, or light candles with their thoughts, or read minds, Loki."

Kurt gave Loki's hand a gentle squeeze, to be sure he was paying attention. "Often, our faces are enough to cause fear. Please understand _lieber Freund_ , that I want you to enjoy your life, and enjoy your talents--but I also want you not to be be hurt, or frightened."

The words, _as I have been hurt or frightened_ were not spoken between them.

"You've already experienced a bitter taste of this world," Kurt went on, giving Loki's hand a gentle squeeze.  "No more of that, _ja_?"

"Ja," Loki had replied absently, though the words, " _Fear is the mother of violence_ ," ran unbidden though his head.  They came from a song J. played for him, and that particular line required no explanation. Loki already knew the truth of it- a truth, bitter truth indeed, one that he'd seen demonstrated to him, beyond doubt, in the ground floor of a Macy's Department store.

Cold sweat prickled down Loki's spine, and for a moment he feared he really would be sick, but he pulled in a steadying breath and answered, with all the humbleness he could muster, "Please forgive me, sir. I sometimes become very absorbed in my work, and I also startle easily."

"So it seems." Mr. Tobit stooped for Loki's pencil, twirling it in his fingers. "Where do you hail from originally, son? London?"

"Þórshöfn," Loki lied- convincingly, he hoped. "It's a very remote village, in Iceland. My father encouraged me to improve my English by viewing numerous programmes of the BBC on the internet. I'm afraid the accent stuck, rather."

"Þórshöfn. In Iceland." His teacher's tone seemed to indicate that now he'd heard everything, and was no longer capable of surprise. "Your name, lad?"

"Loki, sir. Loki Stark."

"Loki. Well." He gave a small, dry laugh. "Have you a brother named Thor, back home?"

"Everyone in Iceland has a brother named Thor, sir. I believe it's decreed by law."

Most of the class laughed at that. To Loki's surprise, Mr. Tobit joined in the laughter with unfeigned mirth. "No doubt, lad. No doubt. Show the class your pineapple, Loki, then tell us what you've done."

Loki settled his glasses more firmly in place to give his drawing a proper look, as he hadn't when he was actually working. The picture struck him as... strange, especially when he sneaked a peek or two at the pineapples around him. Athena clearly had exaggerated when she claimed she "couldn't draw for shit." Her pineapple had a slightly flattened quality, as in certain paintings he'd seen classed as "Primitive" or "Naïve." The texture of the skin had been rendered with loving detail, and on the whole Loki found it charming. The young man to his left had clearly studied too many paintings by the artist Picasso, while the older woman beyond him might have been illustrating a scientific manual on tropical fruit.

His own drawing looked exactly like the pineapple on the pedestal, except, if one examined it more closely, one would see the ocean currents drawn within the lines on the leaves, and on the scaly skin an accurate map of the Caribbean islands with tiny ships sailing.  The creatures of the deep, some real and some imagined, frolicked amongst them.

Every centimeter of his work had been embellished with precise and intricate detail. By light of day, having seen the others' work, it all seemed a bit obsessive, or compulsive--at the very least. Clearly mental.

Nervously, Loki turned the picture for the others to examine. Before he knew it, they were pressing close, remarking between themselves about a detail here, an embellishment there. His heart beat strangely, and he began to find it difficult to breathe.

"Now, now," Mr. Tobit said, mild-voiced, yet nonetheless commanding. "On second thought, I believe that's enough for all of us today. On Friday bring me the following three drawings: a face, a bird, and a tree. I'd enjoy seeing detail. Undertake to emulate our Loki a little in that respect. On your way now, until the end of the week."

The teacher paused, his mouth curved in a slight smile, though his blue eyes remained entirely unreadable. "Not you, Loki. Will you come to my office, please?"

Utterly crushed, certain he'd let Tony down and ruined his thoughtful present, Loki began to collect his things, just as the others collected theirs. Unlike them, he tidied his space with a feeling of dread.

Why had Tony wanted him to do this? Why did Pepper, who understood art, encourage him?

Athena touched his shoulder briefly in passing, meaning the gesture to convey sympathy, Loki was certain. He wished with the whole of his heart that he'd been able to walk out with her into the daylight, avoiding what would surely follow. He was strange, not right, not like them. and no matter how hard he tried to blend in with others, his efforts would only serve to render him more obvious. Why could his friends not see these things? He would be driven from this place in disgrace. Loki knew it.

"Loki? Ready to meet your doom?" Mr. Tobit smiled again as he spoke, but the smile remained at odds with his words. Was it meant cruelly? What doom did Mr. Tobit mean to launch upon him?

"Just along the corridor here," Mr. Tobit said. He moved swiftly, despite his short legs. "Please forgive the clutter."

The office was, in fact, untidy in the extreme, with books, papers, and art materials giving the appearance of having been spun up by some tornado, spat out again, at force, by its fury, and allowed to tumble haphazardly onto every available surface.

"Do you drink tea?" Mr. Tobit asked, excavating an electric kettle from beneath one of the precariously-tilting paper stacks.

"Ah..." Did he drink tea? Loki felt so anxious he could scarcely remember. "Ah... yes? Please?" He lowered himself into an ancient, creaking black office chair, wanting the tea less than he'd ever wanted tea in his life.

"I do enjoy a good cuppa," Mr. Tobit said cheerfully.  He went through the ritual of pouring water into the pot, adding dark, aromatic leaves, then pushing aside still more papers to allow the teapot a place to steep.

"Now, then." He felt the teapot's side with the back of one child-sized hand. "Only a few seconds now, and it will be ready."

Loki found himself making a small, indecipherable noise.

Mr. Tobit pulled out the chair from behind his desk, then arranged it facing Loki's chair, so close his knees nearly touched Loki's knees. Only the tips of his toes, when he sat, brushed the gray-carpeted floor.

"I wanted to ask you, honestly, lad, what on earth prompted you to register for my class? Surely you realize you don't belong there?"

Loki felt his heart begin to beat too fast.  His mouth felt drier than any desert on Midgard.

"Loki?" Mr. Tobit said. "Loki?"

Loki felt almost certain his teacher- his "former teacher," perhaps he ought to say at this point, or his "intended teacher"--had already said his name more than twice. Numbly he reached for the teacup being offered to him, but quickly found a place to set it down, as the shaking of his hands rattled the cup violently on its saucer.

"Thank you," he said, remembering his manners as best he could, though his voice scarcely came out above a whisper. He cleared his throat and tried again, knowing he must explain his temerity in daring to invade Mr. Tobit's classroom. "Tony registered me. It was my gift. One of my gifts. You know the way, yes, that when one is loved, he appears more fair in the eyes of the one who loves him?"

"Loki," J. said gently in his ear, "Take time to listen to your teacher before you fall into a swamp of self-recrimination. I don't believe he is actually saying what you believe he is saying."

"Oh, dear. Oh, dear." Mr. Tobit leaned forward, a look of extreme earnestness creasing his small, wizened face even further. "My poor boy, you can't have actually thought...?"

"See, you must listen," J. said. "Assume nothing, Loki."

Loki remembered the amusing thing Tony said now and then, the play upon the spelling of that particular word: "You know what happens when you assume, big guy? You make an ass of u and me."

"I was certain... that is, I thought you'd meant I wasn't good enough," Loki told the teacher, because Kurt had taught him that most times it was best to be honest, to ask for clarification when there was something he hadn't understood, even when to ask felt shaming. "I thought, for that reason, you intended to say I shouldn't be there, amongst your other students, who are able to see things in the normal way, as I, frequently, cannot."

"Good heavens, dear boy, what's the use in seeing things 'in the normal way' to an artist? The world is chock full of those who see things 'in the normal way.' It's a rare and special person who possesses the ability to do otherwise. I myself am a competent artist, a fine draftsman, qualified to teach others technique. Now and then I experience a brief glimmering of your gift, merely a glimmering..." Mr. Tobit sipped his own tea, studying Loki intently.

"Humanity--" he went on, after a small amount of time had passed.  "I use the term loosely, as you may well believe--has not always been kind to you, has it, Loki?"

"Some people are very kind," Loki answered, in defense of his dear ones. He thought it best to be honest.

Or, at least, to be as honest as he felt he could safely be at this time. "I am here in New York because my father..." He paused, catching his breath, forcing the almost-but-not-quite-true words out between his lips, each one like a sharp shard of glass on his tongue. "That is, I received... was in... was in an... an accident, some weeks past. I was hurt. My mind is not right, though it tries its best to complete the tasks I ask of it. Kurt, my dear friend who tended me when I was ill, and tends me still, says it will improve, though my brain, in its physical self, can never be what it once was.

"Perhaps..."  Loki straightened in his chair.  "Perhaps it's better to exist as I am now, to not remember the things I once remembered. I will try, however, to do my best in my work, sir, and to please you with my progress. I will. I would also not want Tony to be disappointed in me. Please, may I try?"

"Loki..." Mr. Tobit shook his head. "Well, I have made a right muddle of things, haven't I? I didn't call you back here to scold you, or say you couldn't stay in the class, if you wished. I wanted to ask, actually, whether, if you should chose to stay, you would help to teach the others alongside me, as my... Well, let's suppose I call you my honored assistant? There's nothing I have to teach you about drawing, son."

"I suspect," his teacher continued, "There's nothing anyone in the entire school could teach you. Do you only draw, Loki, or do you paint as well?"

"I've forgotten many things, and can't remember painting," Loki answered, confusion rendering him breathless.  Or perhaps it was hope that made him so. "I've only drawn, I believe, though I might like to paint. I enjoy colors. I enjoy shaping things, also, with my hands. When I draw, or when I build, I'm transported to another place, and there no fear exists, no worry, only the act of making."

"Let's say then, in return for your help, I teach you the tricks to using the different sorts of paints? Would that be agreeable?"

"Very much so," Loki answered, still breathless, scarcely able to believe his fortune.

Mr. Tobit sipped his tea, an expression coming over his face that Loki had seen come over Tony's from time to time, a look of want, regret, sorrow, of reaching out for that nebulous, longed-for something that could never quite be caught hold of, despite running after it for as long, and with as much energy, as one was possibly able.

"When I was a young man, in Manchester..." his teacher began, but the words trailed off to nowhere.

Loki listened attentively, his senses extended slightly to catch the flavor of the older man's thoughts.

Mr. Tobit sighed, sipping his tea again. "I suppose we all start with the thought that we will someday change the world, that we have it in us to become Van Goghs, even if we're lucky, in the end, to turn out to be Sir Joshua Reynolds instead. Do you know his work? It's terribly decorous, even decorative. High-born women in fashionable gowns, powerful, rich men. He was the best-regarded artist of his day."

"' _When Sir Joshua Reynolds died_ ,'" Loki answered, quoting a little poem J. had once told him.

 _All Nature was degraded_  
_The King dropp'd a tear into the Queen's ear,_  
_And all his pictures faded._

Mr. Tobit gave his soft, dry little laugh. "Oh, dear!"

"The wondrous madman, William Blake wrote that," Loki continued. "He of the _'tyger burning bright_.' J. told me the paintings of Reynolds did fade, in fact, to the amusement of the many he'd used his influence to thwart in their careers. He was not a man of professional generosity, it seems. J. tells me many things when I can't sleep. He knows my mind requires occupation."

The look Mr. Tobit returned to him appeared to express a certain wonder if, indeed, Mr. William Blake and Loki should equally be considered madmen.

Loki felt the need to explain. "Tony, who often invents quite wondrous things, created J. some time past," he said. "He is an A.I., and my particular friend, being extremely kind and wise--and, of course, since he does not sleep himself, he often provides me with companionship when the others are sleeping. His entire name is J.A.R.V.I.S., after the noble butler of Tony's youth. Like my own sire, Tony's father, though an extremely clever man, could not be called the best of men. Tony gave me a home when I was homeless and friendless. He is both clever and a good man, and someday will know the truth of that, though he questions himself constantly. He has shown great caring and generosity, always, toward me, though I am somewhat trying, being ignorant, frequently, of Mid... of American ways." Loki forced himself to stop, to drink his tea just as his teacher did, to still his tongue. He knew he prattled on, as he would do when nervous, and he hoped the old man would remain kindly disposed to him despite this.

"Forgive me," he said after a pause. "I talk too much, now and then, though I don't mean to. I am slightly nervous just now, because I want you to think well of me."

Mr. Tobit smiled with sudden warmth, not the least offended after all. "I do think well of you, Loki. You're unlike anyone I've ever met."

"Then, if you still wish it, I'll be honored to assist in your classes and, in turn, to learn from you the ways of painting." Loki put out his hand as he'd been taught, sensing this was the correct time for the gesture, as it had not been when he shook hands with Athena.

Mr. Tobit met Loki's eyes with his faded blue eyes, the brightness of his smile increasing, and within his thoughts (though Loki did not pry, or go in to deeply) a sense of joyful anticipation, much as Loki himself had felt at Christmas, in the moment Tony presented him with his beautiful workshop.

He left his teacher's company feeling nearly elated, with a list, drawn up in Mr. Tobit's small precise printing (Loki found himself able to read it easily, from start to finish, through the use of his new spectacles) of the items he must secure and bring with him on the next day, when Mr. Tobit would not only begin his individual lessons, but teach to him the skill of teaching others. Loki had just finished texting, "all is very well, dear friend," to Kurt, when the phone in his pocket came to life, pounding out the clumsy notes of the "Iron Man" song Tony had programmed into it to announce his calls.

"It is I, beloved." Loki answered.

Tony laughed at his method of answering, but there was no trace of mockery in the sound, only amusement. "You're too adorable, you know that, Lok?" he said.

Loki understood his love's words to be that which was called a rhetorical question, one to which no answer was required.

"J. informed me you'd just finished class, and since I was about to scoot up to the lab with Bruce, I wanted to check in and see how my favorite guy was doing before I lost all sense of time. Everything good, babe?"

"All is splendid indeed," Loki answered, and found himself smiling, totally unable to contain the expression, no matter how foolish he might look to any who happened to observe. "And I am delighted to hear your voice."

There was so much he wanted to tell Tony--all about his worries, and how those worries had been laid to rest.  About the kindness of Athena and Mr. Tobit, and the skills he was to learn. With so much to tell, his delight nearly reached the point of bubbling over.

"Tony, it has all gone so _well_. Thank you a thousand times for your generous gifts."

"So, class wasn't an unmitigated disaster, I gather?"

"My fears proved to be entirely without merit."

"What did I tell you?" Tony laughed again, softly and kindly.

"Not to be fearful. That others would love me as you do."

"Okay, maybe not _exactly_ as I do, 'cause then I'd have to indulge in a certain amount of jealousy, but I knew they'd think you were fantastic."

"I long to be home, to tell you all--and to have you love me as you do."

"Ya know, babe, when it comes to that, I wouldn't exactly be adverse." Tony gave another small laugh. "So, when should I expect you?"

"Not until the evening, I fear, for I'm pledged to Darius until then, but you will be in my thoughts throughout that time. Don't you and Bruce blow up the laboratory again. I find I prefer you with eyebrows."

"Smartass," Tony said, still chuckling, not in the least offended.

"I love you," Loki told him, which by now seemed the most natural thing to say in all the world.

"I love you too, Lok," Tony answered, perfectly serious, perfectly sincere, before he disconnected.

Loki slipped the phone back into his pocket, wishing he could burst into song, like a man in love in one of the musicals he often watched with Kurt--except he knew such behavior was strange, and not appropriate to the real world, even though, at times, it ought to be. Instead, he kept the music safe inside his head, where it lightened his steps for the six blocks back to the underground.

 

Loki had never gone alone to Darius's studio, having always the company of Kurt or Pepper, or at least (not that his large and kind-spirited new friend was least in anything), of Happy Hogan. Despite traveling on his own, however, he disembarked the train at the correct stop, easily working his way the two streets over from the subway station to the correct building. working his way the two streets over from the subway station to the correct building.

To his surprise, no light shone through the glass of the door, and his extended senses revealed only silence beyond, where Loki was accustomed to a constant hum of thought and activity. If his friend had not trusted him with the code to the studio door, there would have been no one to admit him, and the wrongness of that jangled through him like music badly played.

Loki, uneasy now, slipped through the unlocked door and stood alone in the usually-busy foyer, wondering what thing had taken place to render all so silent. He slid his consciousness down first one corridor, then another, then another, until it alighted in the vicinity of Darius's office.

He knew at once that his friend was present, though Darius's mind felt muddled and shuttered and strange, something like Tony's mind in the days when he'd still been drinking heavily, yet.... not. Darius's mind, the mere touch of it, made Loki feel... something. Something terrible and familiar, that his own thoughts only seemed willing to skate around, not to grasp firmly.

Loki walked silently down the hall and stood outside the closed office door. Should he knock? Should he call out? He didn't wish to interrupt the designer's work if he was trying to concentrate, but if Darius was in trouble...

Kurt, who was wise, would have known exactly what to do, but Loki didn't.  He could only stand alone in the corridor, thick, oppressive gray clouds seeming to press into his skin, his eyes, blocking out all light, and all possibility of light.

In the end, at last, before his courage could leave him entirely, he turned the handle and stepped inside the glass-walled office, blinking once to accustom his eyes to the slightly brighter light that shone down through the high, narrow windows.

"Darius," he said softly. "It's I. Loki. You were expecting me, I'd thought?  If I was mistaken..."

Skirting the usual clutter, Loki stepped toward the comfortable sofa, where he himself had napped the first time he'd visited Darius. It was a good place for napping, and his friend, Loki had sensed before this, was prone to late nights and often felt very weary. Perhaps he'd fallen asleep there, and the strangeness he now felt was only a curious flavor brought into his Darius's thoughts by his dreams.

Loki's own mind often created awful dreams, dreams that nearly drowned him with a nebulous, grasped-for-yet-never-understood pain, a pain he often had to fight to contain, lest it spill out of his mind and into the minds of those he loved.

Did Darius's mind, perhaps, feel shuttered because he fought that same lonely battle?  Loki hoped not.  He wouldn't have wished that struggle on the worst of his enemies.

He knelt beside the sofa, noting a wine bottle and an overturned glass on the end table close at hand--so, yes, some of this strangeness might be blamed on the alcohol, as had so often been the case with Tony--but not all.  Almost certainly not all.

Loki wished again, with his whole heart, that Kurt could be here. Kurt, who was so kind, and understood human frailty, and human emotion, so completely, as Loki did not.

"Darius?" Loki breathed, wondering what drove him to speak so softly.  If his intent was to wake his friend, he'd almost certainly need to raise his voice above a whisper, yet he couldn't seem to do so.

"Darius.  Dear friend.  It's Loki."

Slowly, the designer opened his eyes, he appeared to try to pull his body upright, yet failed utterly. The dullness in his normally bright eyes, the slowness and clumsiness of his movements, worried Loki.

"Darius?" he said again, and took his friend's face between his hands, feeling the slowness of his breath, the stuttering motion of his heart. In that same terrifying instant, Loki found himself, his awareness, spilling into Darius's body, just as he'd spilled into Tony's on the night he'd repaired each weakness of his beloved's physical form, unable to pull back or contain himself, threads of brilliant green light shooting like fireworks from his fingertips.

He found sorrow and exhaustion, self-loathing and pain, a dull weary ache that never ended, but ground away against Darius's courage as water wears away stone. He found loneliness in the midst of a crowd, frustration that the beautiful things his hands made could never be as lovely as the forms they took within his mind, the fear that the ideas slowed, were ever slowing, that someday they might just... stop, and be no more.

That then he would be nothing.

Except Darius already felt like nothing--that was his secret, his hidden shame, the untrue truth a cruel voice spoke to him, always, within the desolation of his mind, even as external voices sang his praises to the skies.

Darius and Tony, it occurred to Loki, were much of a kind, brilliant and broken, and it may have been that which he found lovable in both--that they, who were capable of so much, thought so little of themselves.

One memory, Loki knew, played again and again through Tony's head, the moment Steve Rogers had said to him, , never knowing how his words wounded, "Big man in a suit of armor. Take that off, what are you?"

Tony answered, as Tony would answer, by all appearances mocking and flippant, "Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist." Only those words, Loki knew well, were merely the words of Tony's second, thicker suit of armor, invisible to all but him, not the voice of Tony's heart.

Tony's true answer to that question of, "What are you?" would almost certainly have been, "Nothing. Nothing. Howard Stark's stupid, worthless son."

So Tony, believing what his father taught him, lived a life of desperately reckless deeds, courting death as another man might court a lover, while Darius, who some wicked person unknown had taught the same cruel lesson...

Darius had swallowed poison, poison that ran now through his veins, and he feared death and welcomed it in nearly equal measure.

"No, my friend, no, no, no," Loki murmured, as he reached deep and pulled with everything he had.

The poison gathered itself against him, a glittering spray of deadly intent, a foe that must be conquered on a thousand fronts, as Loki fought it and Darius both, repairing his friend's damaged body cell by injured cell, shoring up his mind until the wall of indifference itself fell, and Darius fought alongside, rather than against him, the two them together pushing out the toxins until not a single molecule remained.

In that same instant, the battle ended.  Loki snapped back into his own sweat-drenched body. He felt terribly tired, almost too tired to move, just as when he'd healed Tony, drained, his head pounding.

Darius sat blinking at him, his face (though its features weren't changed in the least particular), somehow like the face of a very young child, as if every bit of the darkness of adult knowledge had been drawn away, leaving him perfectly content, perfectly innocent.

"I sent everyone away." He gave a lopsided grin, tragic and joyful all in the same moment, then reached out and took Loki's hand, squeezing it gently. "I forgot you were coming, Loki. Your visit entirely slipped my mind."

Loki gazed back at his friend, realizing he'd always known that Darius, with all his brilliance, his cleverness, his kindness had not wished to linger in the world--and that he, in some part of himself separate from his vanished memories, had known exactly how that felt.

It felt like his hand opening. It felt like deep, velvet, endless, terrifying darkness. It felt like falling and falling and falling...

Loki's realized his eyes were wet. He could scarcely breathe, and his chest hurt. When had those things happened to him? In what time, far off or recent?

Loki knew that they _had_ happened, without doubt. He knew the sensations were real, and closely tied to what Darius had been feeling. The words, "Loki, no," uttered in a low-pitched voice, a voice dismissive and uncaring, echoed suddenly in his head. "Loki. No."

His hands had gone numb, unable to feel, or hold fast, to anything.

"Loki. No." Gods, that voice. Those words. So simple, and yet not simple at all. _You are not needed,_ those words told him, _You are not welcome. You are a pathetic useless thing, and you have outstayed your welcome._

_You are nothing to me. Nothing._

Nauseated and dizzy, breathing far too fast, Loki flung himself at Darius, wrapping him up in his arms, holding tighter than. He'd saved his friend. He had. His friend cared for him. Many, many others cared for him as well. The voice in Darius's head piled lie upon lie; was the voice in Loki's head any different?

Home.  Loki only wanted to go home. Where he was loved.

Where he was good enough. Always good enough.

Where he was waited for, and wanted.

Except, instead, a dark wind caught them up, spinning them until Loki couldn't tell left from right, up from down. Until they were plunging (Loki still holding fast, for what else could he do but hold fast to his friend?) first through the gray, then through the black, tumbling without the least control as a hole in the world opened before them.

They fell through, and were gone.

The once-gaping hole closed tight behind them, as if it had never been.


	4. School Day, Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kurt tries to accustom himself to a school that isn't for "gifted youngsters," then  
> returns home to a worried J.A.R.V.I.S. and the mystery of Loki's disappearance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The original Salem Center school on the Xavier Estate (commonly known as the "X-Mansion") was called "Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters." The name later changed to the "Jean Grey School for Higher Learning."
> 
> "George" is based on the specimen I worked with when I studied anatomy in college. Thank you, George, for your contribution.
> 
> Baby Kurt's father, Azazel, king of the demonic Neyaphem race, fished him out of a German river after mother-of-the-year Mystique chucked him over a waterfall in an attempt (successful, as it turned out) to save her own hide. Azazel then passed wee Kurt on to his former lover, Margali Szardos, a sorceress of sketchy repute (she once created an exact version of Dante's Inferno and trapped Kurt inside, because she blamed him for her son's death). The son in question, Stefan, liked to pass his time with the pleasant hobbies of child-killing and practicing the dark arts--though he way have been possessed at the time. Or not. The people of Winzeldorf, Kurt's home town, didn't take kindly to their children being killed, armed themselves with torches and pitchforks, and set out to hunt down the culprit, unfortunately deciding the most likely suspect had to be that kid with the tail and the glowing eyes. Had Professor Xavier not appeared at that exact moment, we would not have this chapter. Lest we think for a one moment that Azazel saved Baby Kurt out of some sense of mercy or fatherly affection, he was actually busily making babies for future use as batteries in a little Dark Arts dimension-jumping, and didn't want one to go to waste.
> 
> Kurt spent time in Britain as leader of Excalibur team, a team based out of Dr. Moira MacTaggart's Muir Island research station. "Brian" is Captain Britain, "Meggan" the elemental who later became his wife, "Kitty" is Kitty Pryde.
> 
> Kurt's quote is from the children's book _Madeline_ , by Ludwig Bemelmans.

* * *

Kurt's final class of the day, Gross Anatomy, was held in the drabbest possible room, all gray-green tile and steel tables, every last corner of the space so chilly his fellow first-years had to fight off increasing bouts of shivers as the two-hour session progressed, their pale-blue scrubs and white lab coats providing little protection from the dank cold.

The reasons for the lack of heat were fairly obvious, a comfortably warm room and a number of cadavers not being the best of company. Still, Kurt couldn't help but feel slightly guilty. As long as he remained dry, his fur, fine and soft as silk, kept him warm as toast in the winter, pleasantly cool in the summer.

Kurt hoped Loki's school, at least, kept warmer classrooms. Loki always felt the cold so deeply, even if he'd mock his own discomfort with a jaunty, "And I'm meant to be a Frost Giant?" just before he burrowed deep into one of Tony's plushy blankets. Kurt would often see him so, swathed until only his bright eyes and his twisted horns showed above the blanket-folds.

At such times, Kurt couldn't help but remember the boy in Asgard, shivering in the stables with only a horse for company.  The "evil" boy," the "wicked" boy, with his pained eyes and his mouth sewn shut.

_Ach du Lieber._

Kurt wished with all his heart for this day to have gone well for his friend. Hugging Loki goodbye that morning, Loki leaning against him as if to extract a last bit of comfort and support from his presence, Kurt had found himself saying a silent, brief, but entirely heartfelt prayer, Vater im Himmel, _watch over my little brother as he walks out into the world. Guard him, please, from hatred and harm, and let there be those he meets who see his brave spirit and his beauty. Amen._

Kurt hadn't been at his best all day, scarcely able to concentrate and taking in only every other word his professors spoke, all for worrying and wondering how Loki fared out there by himself in the streets (and art schools) of New York. He'd already suffered so much from the cruelty and indifference, both among his adopted people and from humankind. Kurt--who knew exactly how such prejudice and unkindness felt--couldn't bear the thought of Loki having to suffer more.

Better news for Kurt (especially on this distracted day) was that he'd long since learned everything the professors sought to teach him at this stage of his education, and this brief period of having his mind wandering afield, it appeared, would scarcely cause him much harm.

"Class?" the instructor's voice rang out, all crisp consonants and elongated vowels.  "The bones of the skull? Anyone?" 

_Frau_ Professor was a small, spare woman with an accent that spoke of at least an early life spent in Berlin. She also bore a resemblance to Rosa Klebb (villainess of the James Bond film _From Russia with Love_ ) so pronounced that Kurt would have been entirely unsurprised to discover she kept spring-loaded knives in the toes of her sensible shoes, the better to punish her more idiotic students.

"Anyone? Please? No one? _Herr Wagner_ , would you care to enlighten your classmates?"

It was rather a treat, Kurt considered, to hear his surname pronounced correctly, with a nice "V" sound at the beginning and round German vowels, to be called " _Herr_ " instead of "Mister." His reasons for leaving Bavaria had been immediate and profound- if an angry mob armed with torches, wishing to burn one alive at the stake, could be called in any way "profound"--yet Germany was his homeland, would always be his homeland. He had known many fine people there, and it remained good to hear a voice from home, even one from another region than the one he'd known best.

Kurt regarded the cadaver head on the table beside his professor—actually the half-head, as this particular specimen had been split neatly down the middle longitudinally. Kurt couldn't help but imagine the head's other half residing with some other group of woefully ignorant first-year medical students, who also sweat their way through this memorization-heavy class, just as terrified of making fools of themselves in front their peers as his own classmates.

The teacher in Kurt sometimes had to work hard, now and then, not to look at their lack of preparedness with disapproval, to avoid throwing in what he and Tony now referred to, exclusively, as "the Loki eye-roll."

His "little brother" was, in most ways, sweetness itself: kind, inquisitive, so very interested in _every_ new thing he learned and so anxious to tell of his discoveries. Still, Loki hadn't the least tolerance for willful ignorance. He could also spot a liar with ease, even behind pancake makeup or through the lens of a camera, which meant that Loki's viewing of the nightly news, in order to learn about current events, could only be called dramatic.

Eyes were rolled.

The eye-roll worthy group of students Kurt belonged to had proved to contain absolutely no one with a photographic—or even, it seemed, a passable—memory. However, it did include two vomiters and three fainters, by his latest count.

The cadavers they worked with were neat and well-preserved, and Kurt couldn't help but ponder how these same delicate souls, would-be healers of the injured and sick, would react to crouching, elbow-deep in blood, fighting to preserve the fragile light of life within the shattered body of a friend, only to feel that light dim, and dim, and flicker out, beneath their desperate hands.

He reminded himself it wasn't fair to think of the others so harshly, that these young people--though only six or seven years younger than himself in actual, counted years--were perhaps decades younger in experience. They had never been trained to fight for their lives to the absolute bitter end. They had never seen the things Kurt had seen, or traveled to the places he had traveled, either physically or emotionally. Though technically adults, they remained in many ways more childlike than the youths he'd taught at the Jean Grey School.

"Yes, of course, _Frau_ Professor. Gladly," Kurt answered, and moved to the front of the room, taking care to make his gait as human-like as he could manage. His feet didn't exactly lend themselves to the exercise, and never had. He moved most quickly and easily using his tough-palmed hands and the balls of his feet together, either on the ground or upside down from whatever surface stretched above—gravity made no difference to him.

Despite this, a gap remained, always, between what was easy and what was safe, and Kurt had taken care, early in life, to master an upright stance, back and neck stiff, ankles at a ninety-degree angle instead of the forty-five degrees that came most naturally, to go flat-footed instead of with his foot canted upward, his third toe in the air. He thanked God always for giving him springy and resilient muscles, and for the mastery of yoga exercises that let him work out the kinks, which might otherwise have rendered moving in such an unnatural way it might have otherwise become torture by the end of the day.

"The bones of the skull, _Frau_ Professor Kassmeyer," Kurt said, "Mandible, maxilla, zygomatic, nasal, ethmoid, lacrimal, sphenoid, frontal, parietal, temporal, occipital, mastoid process, styloid process, temporo-mandibular."

"Show us, please?"

Kurt had found that he still wasn't entirely comfortable with this new situation. Standing in front of these classmates, strangers and so-called "normals" felt light-years away from standing in front of a class of his young mutant students, or from flying a hundred feet above a hushed crowd. He didn't particularly care for the little ripples of laughter that moved through the room as he pulled on gloves (a size xl, the middle two fingers tucked inside, outer fingers on his two digits, got the job done, more or less), but he ignored them. Most would become accustomed to him at some point in their acquaintance. Some would always hate him, and nothing on earth would change that.

Kurt reminded himself that at first acquaintance dear Kitty Pryde, for a long time now one of his fastest friends, had found him both revolting and terrifying.

"Enough of that!" Professor Kassmeyer snapped. "You are intelligent adults, supposedly, not schoolyard bullies, and since Herr Wagner is the only one here, it appears, with the least amount of knowledge, I suggest you zip it and listen to him!"

So, maybe a little less Rosa Klebb, Kurt couldn't help thinking, And a little more Frau Farbissina, from the Austin Powers films.

He gently raised the half-head (he'd mentally named it "George") from the table.

In life, George had been a heavyset man with sad brown eyes and a walrus mustache, roundcheeked, a pad of fat prominent beneath his chin. A good man, to have donated his body, that others might learn. Kurt said a small prayer for his soul.

He turned the divided head one direction, then another, indicating where each of the bones might be found. These were lessons he'd learned ages ago, taught first by Herr Professor Xavier, then by his friend Hank McCoy, and he couldn't help but wonder when what he "learned" in medical school would become something he didn't already know.

"At that point, fuzzy, you may actually have to start doing a little fucking homework," Tony had said, laughing, just last night at the supper table, while poor Loki sat beside him, big-eyed and already too nervous to eat, his knees drawn up to his chest, Kurt nudging or tickling him now and then with the tip of his tail, trying to coax a smile back to his face.

It had struck Kurt then, as it struck him now, how much he loved those two men, how they'd swiftly become like brothers to him, in ways his sometime-brother Stefan Szardos, devious, charismatic and--in the end, despicable--had never been.

Stefan could only take and take, though from time to time (and if it happened to suit his agenda, he might appear to give. Stefan's generosity, Kurt had found, always carried a price.

Kurt was, at all times, an affectionate man. He had many friends. Friendship to him was not a passing, casual thing. He loved his friends. He would fight for them fiercely-- _had_ fought for them--would even die for them if that was required.

There had been times when he'd known, absolutely, that the X-Mansion was the right place for him to be, the place where he might be the most useful. He'd known through his time in Britain, living at Moira's Muir Island Institute with Brian and Meggan, Kitty and the others, that he'd come to where he ought to be to do good in the world, that he'd joined with the right people. He'd known, too, when it was time to leave Muir Island, and come home.

And now...?

Now every instinct he possessed told him he needed to be at the tower. Yes, this was a good time to complete his schooling, to make official all he'd learned through the years. Yes, he still loved Logan, would always love Logan, until he last drew breath. Yes, the X-Men were his family, now and always, no matter what took place—even having been left behind while the others traveled the galaxy, even after _Herr_ Professor's death and his once-hero Scott's heartbreaking defection- that bond wouldn't break.

Kurt hadn't known what he was heading into when Hank asked him casually one late-autumn day, "So, Kurt, how do you feel about helping me heal a god?"

He hadn't known another family awaited him, a strange little family made up of an engineer, a fallen god, himself, and what Loki called "The Ghost in the Wall." He loved them all, in a way that left him, mentally, a little breathless, and he'd missed them bitterly, even during the brief Holiday Break.

He'd expected Logan, his old friends, and the children to command all his attention. Instead, he'd found himself thinking of Loki, Tony, or J. at odd moments, wondering what they were up to, looking forward to the odd little video texts from Loki that popped up at random moments on his phone.He'd found himself thinking of Loki, Tony, or J. at odd moments, wondering what they were up to, looking forward to the odd little video texts from Loki that popped up at random moments on his phone.He'd found himself thinking of Loki, Tony,  
or J. at odd moments, wondering what they were up to, looking forward to the odd little video  
texts from Loki that popped up at random moments on his phone.

He'd gone home, and it hadn't been home any longer.

When he'd come back to the city, to the tower, when he'd stepped out of the elevator and into the penthouse, Kurt had instantly known: this was home. _This_ place, and no other.

He breathed a sigh of relief when _Frau_ Professor Klassmeyer dismissed the class, smiled a little behind his hand at her caustic instruction that they'd best "force a better knowledge of the bones of the skull through their own thick skulls." To that, she added an admonition to memorize the bones of the arm and hand.

"You do well, _Herr_ Wagner," _Frau_ Professor told him, as Kurt gently returned George to his steel tray, covering him with respectful care. "Please know that you are welcome here, and pay no mind to these foolish children."

Kurt made a careless motion, as if brushing a speck of dust off his shoulder. "I'm perfectly accustomed. At least they don't come armed with torches and pitchforks, like the good folk of my home town, Winzeldorf."

_Frau_ Professor made a wonderful noise, untranslatable and perfectly Germanic, the exact same noise _Frau_ Lieberman, the bearded lady of the circus, who'd also kept the troupe's costumes in good order, would make now and then.

"Pay them no mind, Kurti," _Frau_ Lieberman often said. "You are a good boy, a lovely boy, and those other scamps are only jealous because they can't be so handsome as you."

Dear _Frau_ Lieberman.

When Kurt repeated this anecdote to _Frau_ Professor, she laughed aloud, her face suddenly not grim and sour at all, but full of brightness and mischief.

Kurt grinned in return. "Auf wiedersehen, _Frau_ Professor, until Thursday."

"Auf wiedersehen, Herr Wagner," she answered, still smiling, and Kurt went away light-hearted.

Kurt had found a secluded spot, an outside stairwell excellently screened by overgrown shrubbery, and from there he bamfed his way uptown along a previously-plotted course of successively higher roofs (saving him a 'port straight upward to the top of Avengers Tower), then, finally, straight into the penthouse itself.

" _Herr_ Wagner!" J. called out to him the moment the cloud around him cleared. "Welcome home!"

"And when will you call me Kurt, _lieber Freund_?" Kurt returned, smiling.

"Kurt," the A.I. repeated, in the stuffiest possible manner, sounding rather like a wine snob sampling a questionable vintage--but then his voice dropped low. " _Lieber Freund_ , Kurt?"

"You are my dear friend, J. One of the family, _ja_?"

J. made that peculiar hrumphing sound that meant he was secretly pleased, but couldn't be forced by any means to admit it. With everyone but Loki, even with Tony, most times, he maintained the mask, the persona of the highly proper British butler, but perhaps because Loki was so completely unguarded, J. was usually unguarded with him in return. There had been loving fathers among the circus families Kurt had known, and J. frequently sounded much like those good men, patient and kind.

"I received a text, J.," Kurt said. "Loki sounded happy. Do you have anything more recent?"

"I must discuss the shielding and power requirements of Loki's bee with sir. Loki burns through the charge far too quickly, and may be unaware that he is doing so. There's also an unacceptable degree of static in the bee. His cell phone is little better."

"You're most likely right about the shielding, J.," Kurt answered, removing his coat and hanging it neatly beside several of examples of Tony's outerwear in the closet, stowing his beanie, gloves and scarf in one of the drawers built into the closet wall. "Poor Loki, he was so nervous before he left he couldn't eat. Do you think perhaps he's drawing energy instead from his devices, or from other systems? It's something Tony may wish to explore. We may not have noticed before this because Loki was drawing on the unlimited power of the arc reactor."

"You're often quite clever for a human, Kurt," J. replied, clearly teasing him. "I shall notify sir of your theory."

"You might also want to give Loki a jingle at Darius's studio and remind him to recharge. The bee just pops into his phone, doesn't it? He can juice up both at once?"

"Indeed." J.A.R.V.I.S. paused. When he came back, his voice held a touch of concern. "Kurt, I've attempted to contact Mr. King's establishment by telephone. There's no response, though the lines appear operational."

"Give me a second, I'll try Darius's cell." Kurt thumbed up the number in his contacts, but the call went to voicemail after a single ring.

"Darius King will not be available," the message said. The voice leaving the message, though clearly the designer's, sounded strange to Kurt's sensitive ears.

"There's been a recent, quite heavy, heavy power draw in the building," J. said, an odd quality to his voice that Kurt had never before noticed.

"J.," he asked gently. "Are you frightened?"

"A state of brown-out appears to have been induced." Another pause. "Kurt, I am... apprehensive?"

The slightly longer fur between Kurt's shoulder-blades prickled and stood on end, and a line from a book he'd often read to the younger children popped suddenly into his head:

In the middle of one night  
Miss Clavel turned on the light  
and said, 'Something is not right!'"

"'Something is not right,'" Kurt murmured.

"Will you go, Kurt?" J. asked him, his voice containing a sound as close to pleading as its electronic generators could produce. "Please, can you go to him?"

Kurt stood still, eyes closed, listening in a way that had nothing to do with his ears. _Herr_ Professor Xavier (who, whatever his faults, Kurt had loved deeply, and still sorely missed) theorized that when he did this, Kurt was feeling gravity's pull, and the magnetic forces of the earth, and perhaps, in that, he had been partially correct.

Like Tony, _Herr_ Professor, for all the wonders in his daily life, and his own fertile imagination, had not been able to believe in magic, not really. _Herr_ Professor could only think logically, never emotionally, and therefore didn't _see_ , (as the saying went), the forest for the trees.

Charles Xavier had been a man of order. To him, Kurt's father, Azazel, was an ancient demonlike mutant," with a strong mutant's abilities, a finite, explainable being.

Kurt, out of respect for his mentor, had never argued otherwise, though he knew the truth of his own self. He was a mutant, yes, the blue skin beneath his blue fur a tribute to his mother's contribution to his genes. He also knew magic existed, a heady mixture of chaos and emotion given form in the world.

He knew his father's people, the Neyaphem, among who Azazel reigned as king absolute, were demons, actual demons, beings made of magic.

It might have been that this explained something of the deep love he held for Loki, his newest, yet also now his dearest, friend. Kurt had never met another so alike to himself, an exiled blue prince of mixed blood, with magic alive like fire in his veins.

Kurt knew that he would 'port--he must 'port--that Loki lay beyond reach by any other means.

For the first time in his life, Kurt failed to fix a clear visual image in his mind before he jumped--something _Herr_ Professor always told him would most likely lead to his death.

Logan would have laughed heartily at him if Kurt had ever spoken of "seeing with his heart"--and yet he did. Just now, he did.

Kurt gathered together his sense of Loki, loved and lost, brilliant and yet so often befuddled by all the strangeness around him, and leaped into the unknown, into his emotion, into the full force of his latent magic.

He leaped, and blindly caught hold of his friend, holding tight with arms and legs and tail, every bit of his strength engaged, as they fell and fell and fell on through the dark.


	5. After the Fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony and Bruce get the news that something's gone wrong. Kurt displays superior skill in performing midair physics equations. Loki is haunted by the emotion behind things he can't remember.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many cheesesteak fans claim that a proper Philly Cheesesteak can only be obtained by traveling to Philadelphia (unless, of course, you're Tony Stark). For those unfamiliar, a cheesesteak is a sandwich served on a long, crusty roll and filled with thinly sliced sautéed steak and melted cheese. Generally, the cheese of choice is Cheez Whiz (a  
> violently orange, quasi-cheese-like spread), but American (basically the same thing, though in a slightly more solid state) or provolone are sometimes  
> substituted. Other toppings may include broccoli rabe (also known as rapini), fried onions, sautéed mushrooms, ketchup and hot or sweet peppers.
> 
> Jersey Boys is a long-running musical about Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons.
> 
> "Jennifer" is Bruce's cousin, Jennifer Walters, aka She-Hulk.
> 
> Natasha's song is the first two verses of a traditional Russian song, " _Cossacks' Lullaby_ ". She kindly omits the parts about dying alone and painfully in an unknown place where no one will ever know what became of you. The words "Bayushki bayu" are the equivalent of the "hush-a-bye, my baby" that might be found in an English lullaby.

* * *

"Mario, my man, a million thanks!" Tony accepted a large, grease-splotched sack from the mustachioed older guy at the laboratory door, bringing it over to the least-stained of the benches, where his ScienceBro waited in an creaking (but supremely comfortable) former office chair, circa about 1973. The upholstery was burnt orange, but interior design had no place in the lab.

Bruce appeared slightly apprehensive. "What is it we're having for lunch, again, Tony?" he asked.

"Food of the gods," Tony answered, pulling a brown-paper-wrapped bundle about the size of Bruce's head out of the sack.

"We know a god," Bruce said pensively. "Two gods, actually. Thor's favorite food is pickled herring. What's Loki's?"

"Currently? Pecan praline ice cream with Hershey's syrup and whipped cream from a can. Speaking of which, who taught Loki to spray whipped cream straight from the can into his mouth? 'Cause it sure as hell wasn't me."

"Honestly? I believe I'd be looking in Clint's direction for that one." Bruce carefully lifted the top of his large, newly-unwrapped sandwich and peered at the contents. "Tony, tell me, truly—is that Cheez Whiz? And broccoli? Together? On a sandwich?"

"That, my friend, is a one hundred per cent authentic Philly cheesesteak sandwich. The dude at the door, sporting the excellent pornstache, was Mr. Mario Garelli, sandwich-maker extraordinaire. I flew Mario and Mrs. Mario in from the City of Brotherly Love, put them up at the Plaza and bought them the best tickets to _Jersey Boys_ in the house, just to have him make these for us. And it's broccoli rabe, not broccoli. It's slightly more bitter-tasting. Heaven on a roll, Bruce. Heaven on a roll." Tony took a giant bite of his own sandwich, his mouth flooding with savory bitter-cheesy-beefy goodness. "Oh, gods, that's good!"

Bruce, still looking apprehensive, took a much more demure bite.

"It's good," he said. "Slightly weird."

"It's an American classic, my good man, an American classic. And Pennsylvania is fucking right next door to Ohio, land of your birth. How is it that you've never seen, let alone eaten, a Philly cheesesteak?"

"Because my father was so well known for the cozy family road trips? I can't think why," Bruce said flatly, then took a savage chomp of his sandwich.

"Yeah. There is that." Tony mentally kicked himself for once again inserting his big foot into his big mouth. "Sorry, bro. Default still set at socially-impaired genius idiot, I guess."

"Don't sweat it." Bruce took another bite, and chewed, his face actually relatively peaceful for a change. "You know, I think this culinary monstrosity is actually kind of growing on me. It's probably the toxic orange chemicals in the Cheez Whiz affecting my brain chemistry."

"Probably. But what a way to go, right?" Tony stole a sneaky look in his friend's direction, checking that his sudden bout of foot-in-mouth disease hadn't caused Bruce any lasting distress.

He decided a change of subject was probably in order. "Hey, Kurt moved back in yesterday. He's starting Med school at Weill Cornell."

Bruce gave a short laugh. "I know. I wrote him a letter of recommendation. So did Hank. And Phil."

"Huh." Tony frowned. "Phil?"

"After the Battle of New York, while we were all sitting around eating shawarma, congratulating ourselves on a job well done, there were still a hell of a lot of people out there. Trapped. Injured."

"Bro, you were out there again too,  within hours, providing triage and emergency treatment. I helped get people out. Steve helped. Clint and Nat crawled down about a million miles of ductwork. We'd earned the right to sit down and eat for a few minutes, lick our wounds. I kinda remember being thanked by the mayor for our work both before and after."

"I'm not disputing that. I know you nearly got stuck with an exploding nuclear warhead inside an interdimensional portal. I'm just saying there were people we couldn't reach, people we couldn't blast out, or climb to. S.H.I.E.L.D. pulled out the imaging tech and Fury's little black book of useful people to know and got Kurt teleporting in to places that otherwise couldn't be reached. It was dangerous as hell, and he saved a boatload of people who might have been suffocated, crushed, died from shock or their injuries. He was a hero by any definition, but did the mayor give him personal thanks, a blue, furry mutant with a tail? I don't think so. In our 'new era of tolerance and acceptance,' that still isn't how things work. He's a good kid. I think he's done some humanitarian stuff for Phil since then. Hence the recommendation."

"I don't think Kurt would care one way or another. About the recognition, that is," Tony said, as gently as he was able.

He understood what Bruce was saying, his friend's passion for social justice and doing the right thing, he just felt bad when seeing the world crank on in entirely the opposite direction added to Bruce's already-considerable load of pain.

"It wouldn't exactly be the point of the exercise for him."

"But _my_ point is, Tone, the bigotry, the hate, just keep creeping back in. A single, heroic man saves dozens of citizens from horrible, certain death, but nope, no recognition for him, he's too damn Smurfy?"

"Did you just say 'Smurfy?'" Tony asked, trying not to laugh, because Bruce was discussing a serious subject, and Tony honestly did agreed with him.

"Okay, how about this, something even closer to home. You threw a giant party and brought your gay, mutant-appearing boyfriend as your date, but introduced him as your 'cousin from Iceland.' Can't offend that board of directors, can we? Can't say, 'To hell with your mutantphobia and homophobia, it's modern times and I'm crazy in love with this gorgeous blue man."

"I didn't..." Tony began, shifting awkwardly in his otherwise supremely comfortable chair. "I wasn't..."

He glanced at his ScienceBro's earnest face, his pained expression.

"Fuck. I'm the lowest of the low. I'm a complete hypocrite."

"You're not." Bruce sighed. "I've been thinking a lot, since before Christmas. The night you scared me so bad I Hulked out. Thinking about what I believe in, the kind of man I want to be. Thinking about Loki and his situation."

Tony gave Bruce his questioning look, eyebrows raised to the extreme.

"I have to give Loki a chance, don't I? Not for your sake, of course, Tone--because you're a complete ass-clown."

Tony laughed. "I adore you too, Bruce!"

"Everyone deserves a second chance," his ScienceBro said. "I have to believe that. If I get one, so does everyone."

At that point Bruce's face did that crumpled, hurt thing it would sometimes do, and he tugged off his glasses, polishing each lens strenuously on the tail of his shirt.

"You've been talking to someone," Tony said. As always, he could read Bruce like a book. _Best Friends for Dummies_ , maybe. "I'm betting on... let's see... Thor?"

"Yeah." Bruce slumped back in his seat, then made a fuss of wrapping up his sandwich leftovers. "Yeah. He came to me because he felt shy about coming to you."

Tony took the squashy little bundle to the lab refrigerator—the one where nothing toxic was ever (usually) stored. "Because the mighty god of thunder is at heart a teenage girl? I get it."

Bruce's face crumpled in a slightly different way. "I don't...?"

"You know." Tony laughed. "That thing where the girl likes a boy, and she asks her best friend to ask the guy if he'll take her to the Friday night dance?"

"You're under the impression I did a lot of dating in high school?" Bruce asked. "The only girl I ever talked to was my cousin Jennifer, and if she wanted a boy to dance with her, he would have had to wait in line. She usually had about sixteen of them following her around like puppies at any given time."

Tony laughed again. "I _like_ Jennifer. I _really_

"You are not worthy of her," Bruce said sternly, then, "I do too. She was a rare spot of sanity in my life, and still one of the best people I know."

"If I still drank, I'd drink to her," Tony said solemnly.

"About that-- don't think I haven't noticed. You look good, Tone. You sound good."

"It's all Loki," Tony did a couple twirls of joy in his office chair, just because. "So, tell me.  What did the god of good hair have to say?"

"Stop me if you've heard any of this, but just after Loki found out his... uh... ethnicity, Thor said he and their dad had a huge blow-up fight. Loki had no idea he was a frost giant—and I feel very weird just using that term. Like, frost giant? Loki's tall, no doubt about that, but... really? He hadn't even known he was adopted. He thought he looked just the way we saw, not blue, not horned, more or less like any other Asgardian. Dear old dad just dropped the truth on him in one giant bomb--on Thor too, in a way. One thousand years of really stellar parenting, calling Loki's kids 'monsters,' putting his two sons in constant competition with each other, then, when Loki was _literally_ dangling from a thread—or the end of a spear—off the side of their Rainbow Bridge, just rejecting him completely. No explanation, no, 'Son, let's sit down and talk about about this.' The bastard gave him a look, like, I'm the king of everything and what I say goes, and told him, 'Loki. No.' Nothing else, those two words only.

"Thor said this crazy look of joy, almost, or relief, came over Loki's face, and he just opened up his hand and let go. God only knows where he fell to, expecting to die, and who he met at the end—the Chitauri, we can only guess. Clint said he looked like hell when he came through, and his eyes were blue. And remember what I said?"

"The bag of cats."

"Yes, the bag of cats. Smelling the crazy. Not exactly my best moment as a physician, was it? Sometimes I wish... What if we could have helped him, Tony? What if we'd tried to treat him, break the mind-control, if there was mind-control, at least tried to talk instead of throw sarcastic quips. I look at your Loki, who's gentle and enthusiastic and so eager to please everyone, and Thor says that's just how he was back in the day, that losing his memories changed everything, like traveling back in time to how he'd been. I have to wonder, what the hell was in those memories that turned him into what we saw? Thor wouldn't say much. I'm guessing he was ashamed."

"There's nothing Loki wants to regain," Tony said, and suddenly he didn't want to do science, not today. He wanted to be home when Loki got home, to kiss him and hug him, and hear all about his adventures out in the big world.

He was tidying up the mess from lunch, about to head upstairs, when J.A.R.V.I.S. cleared his throat over the lab speakers—a sound that usually meant, _I need to tell you something that I would really, really rather not say_.

"Yes, my good man?" Tony responded

"Sir," the A.I. began, in the most subdued voice Tony had ever heard from him, J.A.R.V.I.S. usually not being the most subdued kind of intelligence ever created. "Would you and Dr. Banner come upstairs directly? We seem to have a problem..."

* * *

Anyone who hadn't spent his entire life twisting and tumbling through the air at high velocity would undoubtedly have lost either consciousness or his lunch—perhaps both—in short order. As it was, Kurt made a swift calculation relating to initial velocity and distance fallen and the speed at which he and his two—two? he thought that, at the very least that he carried two-- passengers would most likely land, and decided his odds of a safe touchdown weren't likely to get any better as time went on.

With that in mind, he fixed a picture of Tony's large, luxuriously-mattressed bed in his mind's eye, held his breath, and bamfed.

They hit hard, so hard Tony's handmade and imported-from-Japan platform bed seemed to explode around them in a thousand directions, out sharp wooden splinters with such violence that a number of them stuck straight out from the wallboard like the quills of a porcupine.

For a long while Kurt lay on the now-completely-sprung mattress with his two companions, none of them able to so much as move a finger or a toe, the air knocked thoroughly out of their lungs.

A distant cry of, "What the actual fuck?" drifted up the stairs, barely audible through the ringing in Kurt's ears.

Pounding footsteps followed, then J.A.R.V.I.S.'s voice, sounding uncharacteristically shaken. "It's Kurt and Loki and Mr. Darius King, sir. Also, incidentally, I've ordered a new bed, mattress and box spring, as the current set appears damaged beyond further use."

"Thanks, J. Uh..." Tony had gone from his usual light-olive-range coloring to parchment white. He sank down on his knees in the middle of the wreckage, reaching out a shaking hand to touch Loki's cheek. "J., tell me. J., please tell me?"

"...Dr. Banner..." was the only snippet Kurt caught of J.A.R.V.I.S.'s answer, because at that point all sound had started wowwing in and out, like the music of a brass instrument with a mute over its bell. Kurt's vision kept switching back and forth, from full color to gray, full color to gray, his befuddled mind interpreting the change as Oz... Kansas... Oz... Kansas... even though some part of him knew that was completely ridiculous, that one of those places wasn't even real, though he couldn't for the life of him remember which one existed and which was imaginary.

After a while, only Kansas remained, a blurred and nonsensical Kansas at that, and Bruce Banner's voice calling to him from far, far in the distance.

"Everything will be all right, Kurt," Bruce told him.  "Hank's on his way. Everything will be..."

Kurt never did find out what everything would be.  Instead he woke up, an indeterminate time later, in his own bed, dressed in his own pajamas. In a chair beside the bed sat a beautiful ginger-haired woman in black.

"Natasha? What...?" he croaked, in a strange, harsh, whispery little voice he couldn't recognize as his own. He hurt from the tops of his curls to the very furthest tip of his tail.

"I volunteered." The former assassin hauled Kurt upright in an efficient manner, stuck a large pillow in behind his back, and passed him a glass of water.

The first sip burned like liquid fire in his throat, but after a gulp or so, that improved.

Natasha stuck a pill onto Kurt's tongue. "Take it," she commanded. "McCoy said you should."

"Hank's here? Is Loki...?"

"Loki will be fine. Everyone will be fine. You don't need to worry." For one second, Natasha's expression told him she had indeed been worried, very much so, though Kurt had never found her face easy to read. After a moment, to his surprise, she took his hand between both her hands, the one on top rubbing gently over his knuckles.

"No one realizes how kind you are," Kurt said. "You're wonderful, both so very strong, and so gentle."

"You're speaking under the influence, Kurt," Natasha answered.  A smile, perhaps meant to be mocking, flickered over her lips, but Kurt knew what he said was true: she was so strong, so capable, and yet, as they'd worked a number of rescue missions together, each utilizing their own unique but slightly-overlapping skills, he'd found Natasha to always be so tender, so very gentle--especially with the children.

"You were in a bad place, my friend," she said after a little. "A very bad place. You need to rest now, and you'll feel better in the morning."

In truth, Kurt could scarcely keep his eyes open. He let his lids drift shut, lying motionless as the pill Hank had provided made him sleepier still, the numerous aches and pains melting slowly away from his muscles and bones. On the edges of sleep, he felt Natasha still softly holding his hand, then heard her sweet singing voice ebb and flow through a lullaby Kurt could remember Madame Konstantinova, finest of the knife-throwers, singing to her children--and also, indirectly, it seemed--to him, who truly belonged to no one.

Back, back in his circus days.

Now so very long ago...

_"Sleep, my beautiful good boy_ ," Natasha sang softly in her native tongue.

Bayushki bayu,  
_Quietly the moon is looking Into your cradle._  
_I will tell you fairy tales_  
_And sing you little songs,_  
_But you must slumber, with your eyes closed,_  
Bayushki bayu.

_The time will come when you will learn_  
_The soldier's way of life,_  
_Boldly you'll place your foot into the stirrup_  
_And take the gun._  
_The saddle-cloth for your battle horse_  
_I will sew for you from silk._  
_Sleep now, my dear little one,_  
Bayushki bayu.

_We both learned the soldier's way of life,_ Kurt thought, _But so differently, Natasha.  So differently._

Her hand curled warmly against his own, Kurt slipped into a deep and peaceful sleep.

* * *

_I fell,_ Loki thought. _I fell, and the void opened beneath me, only.._.

He forced his eyes open a crack. He felt very tired, and his head pounded, but he lay upon a soft surface, swathed in the folds of a plush blanket, and bending over him...

"Tony," he rasped. "Oh, Tony."

"Baby, gotta tell you, you scared the ever-loving shit out of me." Tony's voice shook, and his eyes were red.  He held Loki's hand far too tightly. It hurt, but Loki didn't want to say so, because it became obvious, to his rapidly clearing vision, that Tony had never been more upset in all their time together.

"I felt so sad," Loki said. "When I leapt, I missed. I didn't mean to, it was only the sadness. I fell into Between, but not out again.  It was an accident."

Tony pulled in a large, ragged breath, then another, but he didn't begin to weep again, as Loki knew he had been weeping before. In time, with his beloved's help, Loki levered himself upright, which worsened the pounding in his head, but did him no real harm.

Tony slid two or three cushions in behind his back, allowing Loki to slump comfortably against the arm of the sofa- for that was the soft surface on which he lay, he now realized, as the common room of the penthouse came into focus around him.

Tony immediately buried his face in Loki's shirt, speaking emphatically and at length into its folds. It struck Loki as funny, the muffled sounds his beloved made reminding him of the complaints of a small, gruff dog, though he fought to conceal his amusement, instead taking Tony in his arms, murmuring comfort to him, stroking his hair.

"All is well," he said. "All is well, my love. You see, I am home. Kurt found me and brought me home."

"Never," Tony told him, with great fervor. "Please, never. Never again, babe."

Loki, not knowing what had taken place since his fall from Darius's office, only made soft soothing sounds.

"You weren't breathing for a minute. A full fucking minute," Tony told him, his voice ever more tremulous. "Almost two. God, Lok, I was scared... I thought... "

"All is well," Loki repeated, wrapping both arms around his love, drawing him close. "You see? I live. I breathe."

"You're also... I would say black-and-blue all over, but you were already blue." Tony gently pushed up Loki's sleeve, displaying his arm, which was indeed most profoundly and impressively bruised. "What would you call that?"

"Plum and dark teal, with splotchings of maroon. I believe Kurt and Darius landed on top of me, and Darius and I knocked heads. Mine hurts."

"That would be the concussion, babe. Keep in mind, please, that your poor brain doesn't need any more abuse."

"I know," Loki answered quietly, fearful that now Tony had overcome his fright, his mood might edge into anger. He knew he had, indeed, been very foolish. He had most certainly, in Tony's words, "lost it" for a moment, nearly with dire consequences.

Tony, however, did not become angry, instead asking, "Are you hungry, babe? Thirsty? Is there anything I can get you?"

"Not hungry." The truth was, Loki felt more than a little sick. "Would you fetch me the juice, Tony? The pink sour juice?"

Tony hurried to the kitchen, returning with a large glass of pink grapefruit, Loki's favorite. With Tony helping to support the glass, he drained it gratefully, returning it after to his beloved's hold.

"Indeed, this is the best of all juices! May I have another, please?"

Tony smiled at him, though he continued to look sad, along with that emotion that was called "stressed." before returning to the kitchen.

"Tony, where is Darius?" Loki asked, nearly fearing to know the answer to his question. He thought his friend had been healed, thought his magic had done its work, but what if he was mistaken? What if all that he believed was only falsehood and wishes? He had the sensation of falling again, and clung tight to Tony's hand, as if to anchor himself, shivering.

"Hey. Hey." Tony pulled the blanket up around Loki's shoulders. "Your friend's okay, babe. Bruce took him down to the infirmary to run a few tests. He was a little wobbley after you three made your bed-destroying descent, but it's nothing my ScienceBro can't handle. You, though... Baby, really, what happened?"

Loki drank down his second glass of juice, though he still felt a little sick. "You know when the machine for washing clothes is on the cycle of rapid spinning?"

Tony gave a little chuckle, a sure sign that his fear had begun to ebb.

"That is how I feel, Tony."

"That's not good."

"No, it is not the best of feelings." Loki only realized he'd begun to weep when he saw the drops splatter down onto the dark fabric of Tony's shirt. "Darius forgot I intended to visit. He'd sent all his minions home, telling them he needed the quiet for a time of creation. And then he... And then I..."

"Uh-huh," Tony said gently. "He told us about that, what he'd done and how you saved him. Lok, he feels sorry as hell to put you through that."

"He never hurt me," Loki protested. "Only there is within me a memory, or something like a memory, yet not... A feeling? An experience? A... a letting go, and a falling. And words. Words and a feeling..." He gestured to his chest. "Like the thrust of a spear through my heart."

He watched his own hand, open now in midair, and that simple word "spear" struck something within him. Yet he couldn't remember, he couldn't, though the sensation seemed right there, so close to grasping. So close.

Loki began to weep again, not silently this time, but in great shuddering sobs that tore through his body. It came to him that he was grieving, grieving bitterly, and yet he didn't know why it should be so, or why the grief seemed nearly great enough to destroy him.


	6. A Knight in Shining Armor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Most sincere apologies! Somehow, my chapters got frisky and rearranged themselves--this is the correct Ch. 6, the Clint chapter is Ch. 7 and the Loki & Mr. Tobit chapter is Ch. 8. How do I manage to confuse myself so profoundly?
> 
> Anyway... Tony looks after his boys.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For your consideration... _The Twilight Zone_ episode "It's a Good Life," from November, 1961, concerned a little boy named Anthony who is gifted (?) with mutant mental powers, which he uses to isolate and control everything and everyone in his small Ohio town. Those who cross him, even in their thoughts, are threatened with a trip to the mysterious "cornfield." Although I'm pretty sure it was never actually shown in the episode, apparently Tony and I both vividly remember the disembodied heads of those his little namesake punished bobbing eerily atop the cornstalks.
> 
> Mr. Yuk was created in 1971 by the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh. He's like a sick, neon-green smiley face with squinched up eyes and his tongue sticking out, and was intended to be stuck on poisonous household substances to deter small, curious children from accidentally eating or drinking them.
> 
> Histology is the study of cells. Gross Anatomy is the study of all the structures of the human body and usually combines both lectures and hands-on work with human cadavers.
> 
> _"She Works Hard for the Money"_ was a 1983 disco hit for Donna Summer.
> 
> You may remember the cranberry bog from _The God Who Fell to Earth,_ when the team had a less-than-successful outing with Dr. Doom.
> 
> "atcha"=at you

* * *

When Tony woke up, the clock read 10:17, his head was thumping like the bass drum line from " _Highway to Hell_ ," and Loki was nowhere to be seen, though when he stumbled through to the neighboring bathroom to help himself to a couple Advil from the medicine cabinet, massive clouds of steam and the scent of lavender still lingered in the air, clearly the recent result of one of Loki's hotter-than-deepest-circle-of-Hell showers. Tony hoped the shower and its heat helped.

It had been past two in the morning before he'd finally been able to walk his battered boyfriend, carefully and infinitely slowly, into the elevator and from there to his old bedroom upstairs. Loki had been totally right, all those days ago, Tony discovered —the mattress on this bed was nowhere near as comfortable as the one on the big bed they normally shared.

Even with Hank McCoy-approved pain medication, Loki had been too uncomfortable to really sleep well. He didn't toss and turn for the simple reason that he'd been too sore even to move, and no wonder--his body looked like a Midwestern sky in August, like a thunderstorm had borne down and blotted out all the clear blue.

Loki had also seemed... was sad the right word? "Sad" seemed too little, really, insufficient, not nearly complex enough to encompass the avalanche of stuff bouncing around inside Loki's poor, already overly-abused head.

Even "devastated" didn't seem strong enough. Everything Loki said or did made it seem like he wanted to talk, as if he wished he could ask for help or explanation, he just literally wasn't able to do so. With all the words stuffed inside his mind, all the brilliance and complexity of his brain, either the damage blocked what he wanted to say, or there just weren't words in existence that would let him express his feelings.

Tony, in turn, though he wanted to guide him, wanted to help Loki say what he needed to say, wasn't exactly sure how to bridge the gap, his experience with emotions mostly having been either shoving them down or covering them up if they managed to fight their way to the surface, thereby avoiding going into personal meltdown.

At least, Tony tried to console himself, it appeared that Loki could move a little on his own this morning. Maybe he could be happy about that, if nothing else.

"Hey, J.?" he asked, drawing a frowny face on the mirror with his finger, "Where are my boys?"

"You'll find them downstairs, sir, in the living area. Kurt intended to make breakfast, but has not yet managed to bestir himself, for understandable reasons. We have both spoken with Loki at length and, I believe, somewhat calmed him, but he still seems deeply upset, both on the subject of Mr. King's episode of despair, and in regards to his own missing memories. He attempted to relate to us what he perceived to be a similar near-fatal experience—though whether that experience was his own or another's, Loki was unable to fathom. With the thought that Mr. Odinson may perhaps be familiar with the events in question, ought I to place a call to him in London?"

"Yeah, good question, J. But... god-fucking-dammit." Tony sighed, smearing away the now-dripping frowny-face with his hand.  The mirror now showed a bleary view of a frowning middle-aged man who clearly hadn't gotten enough sleep. He would rather not have admitted it looked like him—but it totally did.

"Also a troubling one, as questions go," J.A.R.V.I.S. added.

"You said it," Tony grumbled.

On the one hand, was Thor "Mr. Subtlety" Odinson ever a good person to trust with a sensitive emotional situation? On the other hand, J.A.R.V.I.S. was right, who else really knew anything about the events of Loki's pre-tower life?

"I've observed..." J. paused. If he'd been human, Tony would have suspected the pause was there to let him catch hold of and shove down his own emotions—and maybe that's exactly what he was up to, because, as now clearly couldn't be denied, J. had turned out way more complex, way more emotionally whole, way more complete as a person, than Tony had ever anticipated, way more complete than he had any business being.

That being the case, Tony had to ask... "J... Since Loki came...?"

He honestly didn't know how to put the question into words, wanting to avoid sounding shallow or flippant or insulting. In the old days, he might just have blurted out, "Has our own special Blue Fairy turned you into a real boy, my digital Pinocchio?"

Now Tony knew that wouldn't be appropriate. In fact, he was no longer exactly sure how to talk to J.A.R.V.I.S. He felt weirdly... was "shy" the right word?

This was apparently his day for questioning his own vocabulary.

"J., I've noticed... you've changed a bit since Loki came," he mumbled, instead of all the far more brilliant or insightful things he meant or wanted to say.

"My psuedo-synaptic connections have increased by 82%," J. told him quietly.

"82%? Fuck, J.!" Tony was floored.

The psuedo-synapses were kind of his special thing, the network of connections that allowed J.A.R.V.I.S. to learn, grow, have a personality, but they were limited because, genius aside, Tony was limited, being human and all. He also learned and grew (though the personality part was debatable, some might say), and he'd made improvements over the years. His improvements, in turn, allowed J. himself to make improvements. But eighty-two-fucking-per cent? That completely defied reason. And computer science. And pretty much the laws of the universe.

Holy hell.

"And this took place how?" Tony asked, his voice breaking in a way he thought he'd said goodbye to before he ever headed off to MIT.

"Loki needed someone to talk to," the A.I. continued, in the same gentle voice. "He... I suppose one might say, visualized me, imagined me as entirely a real person, with the tower as my body, and I... I suppose you could say I became so. Do you understand what I'm telling you, sir?"

"Fuck," Tony said again, succinctly.

He felt hard-pressed not to think of that old episode of _The Twilight Zone_ , the one with the kid who could make happen whatever he imagined, and the heads of the people who'd offended him bobbing away atop a field of distant cornstalks.

"Does he realize?"

"I don't believe he does. I also believe that in order for the... magic... for lack of a better word to happen, he must wish for the end result very badly indeed. For me to be a real person, in order to have a friend who could understand him in those times when Kurt, or you, were not here. For your own body to be rejuvinated and healed, so that you would not be taken from him. These were wants from the core of his being, not casual whims.

"Remember also," J. continued, "That although childlike and innocent in many ways, Loki is not a child. He is whimsical, now and then, but not arbitrary. He possesses, still, an adult's strength and discipline, an adult's capacity for self-denial. Remember, also, that whatever cruelties and sufferings inflicted upon him drove him into madness and cruelty himself, those events have now been removed from his mind. He fears his erstwhile father, but does not know precisely why he fears him. He has learned to be apprehensive of the madness of the crowd, but on the whole, his experiences in this new life have been colored with kindness. Captain Rogers rescued him. You gave him a home when he had none, and have loved him faithfully. Miss Potts and Mr. Hogan treated him as a person worthy of consideration and respect. His brother is no longer one with whom he needs to compete. And Kurt has taught him the meaning of unconditional love. He has, one might say, been born into a second life in which his nurture is diametrically opposed to that which he received in his prior existence."

"Yeah, that's all well and good, J. and, really, color me totally impressed by your understanding of the situation, but what do we do now?"

Tony sucked in a deep, though slightly-shaky breath. "Loki's in a ton of pain, and at least half of that pain is there because he feels the hurt of things he can't remember. It's hurts me watching him struggle through that, when at the same time I can't figure out what to do. Should we make an executive decision, or do we leave it up to Loki? I mean, I guess if he decides to go for all the dirty details and gives the thumbs-up on talking to Thor, we can let that happen, but we've gotta have you and Kurt there as backup to run any bizarre _we-are-the-mighty-sons-of-Asgard_ crap through a heavy filter of sanity."

"And you also, sir, as Loki's protector," J.A.R.V.I.S. said, with a tone to his voice that could be called "significant." As if, it signified that Tony needed to be there, or else.

That being said, Tony found he liked that word, "protector." It made him feel like the Knight in Shining Armor on the white steed, ready to guard his love whatever the cost. And it was true enough--he damn well would protect Loki with everything he had.

On the other hand, the emotional stuff scared him. It always had. Maybe it always would. So did Loki's world-shaping abilities.

More and more, it became clear, it wasn't just that magic was real, or that Loki used magic—or even that Loki _was_ magic. It was the part about him being a for-real, actual, fucking _god_. That whole concept kind of knocked Tony back a step.

It would have knocked him back even more, except that Loki clearly didn't pull out the god card unless it was something he considered really, really important. Besides which, the things Loki had done to prove his godhood were just so damn... was sweet the right word?

Tony thought maybe it was, in this case. Those Loki-style miracles were loving, and sweet, and they made the world better for the ones who received his godly blessings, and how many divine beings could claim that?

Tony had been up all of fifteen minutes and already he felt exhausted. Couldn't he just go back to bed now?

Clearly "no" had to be the answer to that one.

Instead, Tony wandered down around the curves of the spiral staircase, finding in the room below pretty much exactly the scene he'd expected to see, which was Kurt curled up at one end of the couch, half asleep, and Loki rolled into a ball of not-very-happy-Lokiness at the other, one shiny horn poking out from under his blanket.

"I'll make breakfast... momentarily..." Kurt mumbled drowsily.

Loki emerged a few inches from his cocoon. He had two black eyes and approximately the same facial expression as a Mr. Yuk sticker.

"Nope. Uh-unh. No, you won't," Tony answered, taking a seat on the coffee table and looking from one blue face to the other. His poor boys.

"I give the Poppin' Fresh Family a deal on their rent for exactly this reason. This morning, guys, they will be making our breakfast.  When you're ready," he added, when Loki's face got Mr. Yukkier.

"No," he grunted, in tones of utter disgust.

"Perhaps later," Kurt chimed in, with his usual pleasantness.

"Okay, so that's a no for now, but we still want coffee, right?" Personally, Tony needed coffee in pretty much the same way a vampire needs blood.

"Tea?" Loki muttered into the couch cushion.

"Tea it is, babe. Kurt, I know med school is one of those, 'Don't miss unless you're bleeding out your eyeballs' sort of situations,' which means your job is to rest until you have to head out to class--which is when?"

"One o'clock for Histology. Gross Anatomy just after." Kurt rose slightly on one elbow. Bruises wouldn't show, of course, through his short, dense fur, and he was clearly making an effort to keep any sign of pain from his face, so as not to worry Loki, but Tony could still tell the normally light-hearted mutant was loving life a lot less than usual this particular morning.

"J., would you order a car and driver for Kurt, please? Delivery and pickup."

"Tony, I couldn't..." Kurt began.

"Is there something about the words 'Tony Stark, Billionaire,' we've failed to understand?" Tony grinned.  "Kurt, _mein Freund_ ,  yesterday, I spent at least 3000 bucks to have a guy bring me a frickin' sandwich. I have half a dozen men and/or women on the payroll whose sole job is to wear black suits, sit around a basement office, and hope that I'll request that they drive somebody somewhere at some time. Help these poor, bored human beings earn their pay, my friend. Believe me, they'll thank you. A person can only play so many games of _Free Cell_ before madness sets in, you know?"

Kurt laughed softly, one arm moving to hold his ribs. "Then, in the interest of helping these poor unfortunates maintain their tenuous hold on sanity, I will, of course, accept, Tony. _Vielen Dank_."

"You're a member of the family, Kurt. Anything I have is yours, _verstehen_?"

"You do know, Tony, _mein lieber Freund_ , that particular word means 'to understand in a deep, nearly empathic way?'" Kurt said.

"So, Kurt, my equally dear friend, please do understand what I'm telling you in a deep, nearly empathic way. Last night, you saved the life of a decent, brilliant man who I hope one day will forgive me my past indiscretions and make me a truly excellent tuxedo. You risked your own life to do so. Above and beyond that, you saved the life of the man I... the man..."

Tony fully meant to say, 'the man I love.' He had, by now, no problem telling Loki he loved him, or having others hear how much he loved Loki. Hell, he'd gladly shout it from the rooftops at this point.

It was just that it had hit him, suddenly—probably with the approximate weight of both Kurt and Darius King dropping at high speed onto Loki's chest the night before—that if not for Kurt's supremely excellent sense of timing, Loki might well have fallen so far (wherever it had been he was falling through) as to be beyond rescuing, and that the life of one Tony Stark, minus his beloved god of mischief, would then have become unlivable.

Kurt sat up, reaching out to rest his hand on Tony's knee.

"You can let go of the fear," he said gently. "We always fear for the one we love above all others when there is danger, but Loki is safe, I was there to help, and all that is over, nothing more to be afraid of. To touch his mind cannot injure me, and you will not be injured, now, by losing him. Loki is here, and he is healing. All is well."

Tony rubbed his eyes hard on the sleeve of his bathrobe, in lieu of losing it utterly and completely, sobbing his heart out, and probably scaring the crap out of his poor boyfriend.

He stared down at the powerful blue hand resting quietly on the plush red-and-yellow striped fabric of his bathrobe.

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah. I know. I know. May I just add, though, your timing certainly doesn't suck, Kurt."

"My timing never sucks, that is part of my ineffable charm." The German gave one of his quiet laughs and retreated back under his blanket. "Now, I believe I heard you mention coffee, _ja_?"

"Anything for you, my friend," Tony said, and meant it, in a million different ways.

He felt almost buoyant as he headed for the kitchen, whistling cheerily (and very much off-tune) as he measured out the Italian dark roast, Kurt's favorite, to fill the basket of the coffeemaker, putting on the kettle to make tea for Loki—ginger, because he'd felt sick last night, and by the look of his four-shades-paler-than-usual (bruises aside) face this morning, wasn't feeling a whole lot better.

" _She Works Hard for the Money_ " blared out of his phone while Tony was waiting for the brewing and the boiling, respectively. That meant Pepper.

"I wanted to tell you I'll be out of the office today," his ex-lover and always-friend said, almost whispering. "There's nothing in particular pending that my assistant won't be able to handle, and I'll be reachable by phone in case of emergency. How are the boys? Okay, I hope?"

"Sore. Creaky. Very much alive." Tony made a wild guess, based on Pepper's whisper. "You're with King?"

"I've ordered a car. There's a really good place upstate that can take him for treatment, but he really should have a friend by his side to help him get through the formalities. I volunteered."

"You're a good person, Pep." Tony didn't bother to ask her how she was. One of her close friends had tried to end his own life, would have ended his life if not for the event of an real, actual miracle.

That—except for the miracle part—had to suck on every level.

"I mean it," Tony told her. "You're always a wonderful friend. You do the right things. I know Bruce told me that King wasn't quite as physically banged up as Lok and Kurt, but tell him to rest and feel better, that everyone here is pulling for him. And... okay, tell him not to feel bad. Embarrassed. Whatever. A lot of us have been there. To the place where he was."

"Yes," said Pep, who probably understood Tony's own "Man of Action" lifestyle better than he did, even more quietly. "Yes, I know."

She did know, Tony was perfectly aware. Pepper understood all sorts of things, both said and unsaid. She wasn't just supremely smart as a businesswoman, she was wise as a person, and she'd shifted Stark Industries from making some money (okay, admittedly a fair amount, but still) as a more-than-semi-sketchy manufacturer of weapons into making bucket-loads of money creating and marketing products that Tony never had to, even for one minute, feel ashamed of creating. He owed her everything, and he knew it.

"Remember, If there's anything at all King needs, I can make that happen. And once he's settled in, if he wants and can have company, I'll for sure see that Loki makes it there for a visit."

"Darius would like that," Pepper said. "I'd come upstairs to see the boys if I could..."

"They get it. I'll tell them I talked to you. Have a safe trip, Pep."

"Give them my love?"

"You got it."

"And, Tony—keep a bit of that love for yourself."

"You bet.  Right back atcha."

She'd made him feel close to weepy again, after an already uncomfortably emotional morning, but he fought through it.

"Same to you, Pepper," he added then, because he didn't really need that Smartass Tony persona as much as he used to, not with Pepper, or with anyone who genuinely cared for him. "Same to you."

When the phone was back in his pocket, he added cream to Kurt's coffee, and—after a moment's reflection, a dollop to his own—because, why the hell not? King Howard Stark was dead, and with him all his stern and unjust laws, laws that had haunted Tony for years.

Long live King Tony, who could put cream in his coffee if he wanted it, or even have a fucking chai latte if that took his fancy, and who, also, was allowed to love the person he loved, even if that person was a blue, horned Norse god from ancient days.

Lovingly, he poured a splash of milk into Loki's tea, then carried all three cups back to the couch. He'd have made a terrible waiter, spillage did occur, but he managed to get each cup to its proper owner more or less full.

As usual, Kurt looked like he was having a religious experience over his first cup of the day—or maybe, it hit Tony suddenly, he actually was, in a way. Maybe he was saying grace.

"Kurt," he asked, when his friend's eyes opened. "Were you just... praying over your coffee?"

" _Ja_ ," Kurt said, with a fangy grin. "I was praying that you made it properly this time, having tasted the bitter witch's brew you've served me on numerous other occasions."

Tony laughed. "Seriously, though."

"I believe, absolutely, in science, in all its intricacy and beauty." Kurt sipped carefully from his cup. "Ah, that is quite good, Tony! Your skill as a barista greatly improves. I also believe, absolutely, in the love and mercy of Our Father. No conflict whatsoever exists within my mind. The universe is ancient and wonderfully complex, far beyond my meager understanding, and so I learn what I am able, with a humble and curious heart."

Kurt's tail slipped out from under the blanket, curling into a gentle coil around Tony's bare ankle. "I have so very much to be thankful for, _lieber Freund_ ," he said, "So very much."

"And you don't look at all the bad shit in the world?"

"Tony." Kurt looked at him steadily, kindness and humor in his brightly glowing eyes. "I am as well acquainted as any with the 'bad shit in the world.' Looking as I do, how could I not be aware of it? However, I am thankful because there is so much good mixed in with the bad. If there were only, ever, survival of the fittest, we would live within a battle that never ended, seeing only the pragmatic usefulness of the things around us, but we have so much to feed--instead of to break down--our spirits, so much beauty, art and music, dance, books, films. We have self-sacrifice and courage, kindness where it is not required, generosity, nurturing, tenderness, gentleness, compassion, laughter... So much good, dear Tony. So much good."

"Sometimes I wish I was more like you," Tony said, almost without meaning to.

"Why?" Kurt asked with a soft laugh. "When you are perfectly Tony, just as you are, and we love you."

Tony didn't know what to say to that. No one, not even his mother, or Mrs. Cook, or the human Jarvis had ever described him as "perfectly Tony." What did that even mean?

What had Kurt meant, too, when he'd said Loki's mind couldn't hurt him? He was, what? Protected by his superhuman powers of saintliness?

"You're too good for this world, you know that, right?" he told Kurt, but his friend only laughed, in that way he had, not mocking Tony, just amused down to his core.

"I love you both," Loki mumbled into his pillow, as if feeling the need to break up an argument. "You are perfectly Tony and perfectly Kurt."

"Someone's perfectly stoned on pain meds," Tony said, climbing to his feet to adjust his boyfriend's blanket just a little more snugly and to kiss him, with infinite care, on the temple, a smile flickering over Loki's lips before he drifted even deeper into what finally appeared to be a peaceful sleep.

Kurt and Tony both moved to the big chairs. Kurt curled up with his StarkPad, nodding off, now and then, over what he'd said was his Histology textbook.

"I'm reading ahead," he'd told Tony, adding doubtfully, "Perhaps there are parts I don't know."

Tony was also doubtful. He actually expected that if Kurt had been allowed to sit down and take the exams to prove his knowledge, he could have flown through med school in less than a week. He also suspected that Kurt had connections, here and there, that would have allowed him to fake his credentials and go straight on to a residency.

That Kurt hadn't, that he chose to put in the time and the work, spoke volumes about his careful and caring nature. He would give his future patients what they deserved, a properly, painstakingly-trained doctor, and if it was a little boring for him just now, Kurt took that in his usual way, cheerfully and patiently.

Tony admired the hell out of that, and couldn't have followed the same path to save his immortal soul, if he had one. He'd never been able to do anything but zoom full speed ahead, not because he was fearless, like his friend, who flung himself through the air and flipped and turned, sticking now to a wall, now to a ceiling, now to the side of a perilously high building, but because he was afraid of going slow, of looking behind him, of truly breaking down the past that it seemed was always with him, fucking him up in ways he sometimes wasn't even aware of.

He looked from one sleeping face to another and loved his blue boys so much it made a hard, painful knot in his belly. He could have lost both of them last night, his brother and his lover, could have had them vanish into an unreachable void where he could never, ever find them again.

Only here they were. Not lost. Not vanished. Right here with him.

For more than half an hour Tony sat with tears first stinging his eyes, then running unchecked down his face. They were here, still here. He was loved, and perhaps would always be loved, because there were things inside him—amazingly enough—that others found worthy of loving.

Tony recalled Kurt's words, and a sense of something close to wonder spread through him, releasing the hard, hurtful knot, filling him with a sense of exhilaration. It would be all right, maybe? Maybe it would be okay in the end?

He noticed Kurt stirring and bolted upstairs, to shower and wash away all signs of his personal sobfest, to dress himself in grown-up clothes for the day.

He could hold things together now, watch over his guys, make sure they actually ate, that they had everything they needed, maybe doodle a little on his own StarkPad, jotting down all those ideas and designs that had popped into head during the past week, that he'd meant to sketch out, or at least take notes on.

Of course it wasn't to be. He was just stepping out of the shower, dressed in nothing but a towel and wondering if it was even worthwhile to bother shaving, when Steve sent up the Bat Signal- or the Avengers Assemble call, as the case might be.

Steve's timing always did reek.

"Let him know I'm on my way," Tony told J.A.R.V.I.S., padding damp-footed down the hall to fetch what Clint called his Iron Man longjohns from the closet of his destroyed bedroom, taking care not to step on the splintery matchsticks that were all that remained of his once extremely nice bed.

He ran through a couple quick calculations of what speed the three men must have been traveling at when they hit, in order to cause that kind of destruction, then decided he was better off just not knowing. Because damn—no wonder they hurt!

Tony kissed each of his boys before he left, Loki on the lips, softly, tasting his sweetness even with that quick, light touch, Kurt on the top of his springy curls.

"Captain Rogers wondered..." J.A.R.V.I.S. broke in.

"Tell Cap to hang the hell on, not to get his knickers in a twist," Tony interrupted.

"I most certainly will not," J. countered.

"Then tell him I'm assembling already, okay?" Tony pushed the button on his wrist, calling his suit to him as he stepped through the double doors and out onto the terrace, into the brisk, wintery air. "Tell him I said, 'I'll beat you to the roof, Grandpa.'"

As J.A.R.V.I.S. sniffed, "You are, as usual, incorrigible, sir," the pieces of the suit formed around Tony's body with their familiar, comforting clinks and clanks and hisses.

He felt invulnerable, not incorrigible, stronger than strong, as if nothing the day brought could possibly hurt him—and if that was a dangerous frame of mind to take into battle, Tony didn't care, it was still what he felt.

It hit him suddenly--maybe he didn't have the requisite white steed, but he actually was a knight in shining armor, if by "shining" you meant glaringly red-and-yellow. Who needed a steed, anyway, when you could soar through the sky practically at the speed of sound, fighting things a hundred times more dangerous than mere dragons?

Hitting the air, he knew one thing, at the very least: this day would not end with him floating in a cranberry bog, contemplating his many sins.

This day he would be, above all else, perfectly Tony


	7. Dark Passenger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Most sincere apologies! Somehow, my chapters got frisky and rearranged themselves--this is the correct Ch. 7, the "knight in shining armor" chapter is Ch. 6 and the Loki & Mr. Tobit chapter is Ch. 8.
> 
> Clinton Francis Barton, don't you dare! Just... don't.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dexter (serial killer of serial killers) always talks about the "Dark Passenger" that urges him to do bad things. Whether the Dark Passenger is Dexter's Hulk, the result of childhood trauma, or a justification, is debatable, but if a voice in your head tells you to do bad stuff, my thought is that it's generally better not to do it.
> 
> I had to laugh at myself, because when I "mom voice" male characters in my head and I don't know their real middle names, I always use "Francis." Turns out, when I looked it up, Clint's middle name actually _is_ Francis! Ha!
> 
> The U.S. ten dollar bill is sometimes called a "sawbuck" based on the Roman numeral for ten (X) resembling the similarly shaped support for cutting wood. In my neck of the woods, we use non-X-shaped, much more headless-horse-shaped sawhorses which we, oddly enough, call "sawhorses." A half a sawbuck is, of course, five dollars (also known as a fin, a fiver, or a five-spot).
> 
> A "cuppa joe" is a cup of coffee, disparagingly named after Josephus Daniels, non-drinker and U.S. Secretary of the Navy during WWI. Since sailors weren't allowed alcohol under his command, they were left with coffee as the closest thing to an enjoyable beverage, snarkily referring to it as "a cup of Joseph Daniels," a name soon shortened to "a cup of Joe.”
> 
> The iron cross is a mens' gymnastics move, usually required in competitions and  
> performed on the rings. With one hand on each ring, the gymnast puts his arms straight out from his shoulders and holds his body perfectly still in midair. To me, this sounds painful.
> 
> British series _Danger Man_ , known as _Secret Agent Man_ in the U.S., was broadcast first between 1960 and 1962, then again between 1964 and 1968. The series featured the supremely cool Patrick McGoohan as secret agent John Drake. There was also a  
>  1966 Johnny Rivers hit called "Secret Agent Man." Raise your hand if, like many of us, you thought Johnny was singing "secret Asian man" and that the song was about the sad life of a Japanese spy. My only excuse is that I was very young at the time.
> 
> The quote, from crazycakes Roman Emperor Caligula, is actually, "I will nurse a  
> viper in the bosom of Rome."

* * *

It was true enough. Clint had a headache. It pounded. It throbbed. It seethed with questions, phrased in a vocabulary that wouldn't have seemed too out of place in a fucking Jane Austen movie. It got into his gut and made him feel queasy.

Phil offered pills, both the naturopathic shit he liked to use and conventional over-the-counter (which, naturally, did no good—it wasn't that kind of headache). He offered to make Clint an appointment, or to drive him to the Urgent Care Clinic, and those things being refused, brought him tea and dry toast and rubbed the back of Clint’s neck, proving two things beyond doubt: one, that he was a prince among boyfriends; two, that when it came to certain things, he remained completely clueless.

Phil left for work nearly twenty minutes late, protesting that he didn’t want to, but…

“Go, go!” Clint, lying on the sofa with a cushion over his face, flapped a hand in his general direction.

Phil made one of his noises. It meant, "I'm so sorry you're sick!" And "I wouldn't leave you if I didn't absolutely have to!"

“I know. Trainees. I love you!” Clint called after him, wondering why he'd told Nat the whole story, or as close to the whole story as anyone was ever going to get, but kept it from Phil, who he did, honestly, love, and who also loved him.

Phil came back to give him a proper kiss, one of those tender Phil kisses that, after months now, still left Clint feeling strange, like he wasn’t worthy and never would be—which was really actually completely true, to varying degrees.

He kissed Phil back, and was glad, in that minute, that his guy didn’t know him quite as well as he thought he did, that Phil was only aware of him as a man guilty of expedient, but not of malicious, acts.

Someone was laughing, it seemed, far back in a corner of his head. Watching and laughing, amused as hell, in a way that didn't seem hooked in, in any way, to the Loki connection.

It was just something Clint noticed.

Then, just as suddenly, didn't.

 _You call yourself what?_ Clint's low-life brother Barney had once asked him. _A spy for the good guys? An assassin? So, in what way does that make what you do better than what I do? How are you better than me? Because you fucking care? That and half a sawbuck will get you a cuppa joe at Starbucks._

 _I'm not better than you_ , Clint had wanted to say, _I'm not better than anyone. I am what life, or Dad (because unless your name was Steve Rogers, you didn't get to be a male Avenger without also being a card-carrying member of the Major Daddy Issues Club) made me. Maybe I got some better breaks than you, bro, or some better friends, but that doesn't make me better, why do you think it would?_

Phil’s giant dog, that generally accompanied him to the office, gave Clint a last long judging look, a look that somehow managed to combine suspicion with disdain (this despite the fact that that damn dog, though elegant as hell, was also as dumb as a box of rocks), then turned tail as if she was scared and, with a desolate lone-wolf kind of howl, raced after her master as he left the apartment.

She generally wasn't a howling type of dog. Usually the only thing Clint heard from her was the clicking of her giant claws as she walked from room to room on the hardwood floors.

Clint waited. He felt like crap. Shortly after lunchtime (a meal he felt absolutely no desire to eat, and didn't), Kurt Wagner popped in (and when Clint said popped, he meant popped, let no fire or brimstone be spared in the action).

Kurt was dressed in scrubs, a white coat folded neatly over his beautifully-sculpted and lightly- fuzzy arm. Like Clint, he was "circus folk," except in the German's case, being circus folk apparently meant being part of a happy, international traveling family that cooked pots of nourishing soup for one another, learned each other's languages, and made sure their children read books of an improving nature. As opposed to the Carson Carnival of Traveling Wonder, where it meant driving the dusty roads of the Midwest in barely-functional motorhomes, eating nothing, ever, that hadn't first been deep-fried, and rotting their impressionable young minds with junk TV and porn.

Kurt, it could not be overstressed, was kind, and decent. If a decent guy had ever lived, in fact, that guy was Kurt. He spoke multiple languages, had lovely manners, a Harvard level of education, and could hold an iron cross on the rings, in perfect form, while meanwhile chatting and laughing, until the proverbial cows came home.

He also looked like a demon, but who could hold that against him? He was a cute demon. A Smurfy demon colored a pleasing shade of blue, rather than the more traditional Hellfire-red.

Clint liked Kurt a lot—how could he not?--and thought Kurt liked him. Kurt loved Tony like a big brother, and Loki like a baby brother. He was also, apparently, engaged to Logan, aka Wolverine, _"I'm the best at what I do, and what I do ain't very nice_ ," who had been known to threaten dire things toward the man-parts of those who intended harm to his honey.

Kurt, being Kurt, had stopped by Clint's place to be sympathetic, and also to ask if he needed anything, if he was holding up okay, all the while skating around the real issue as delicately as an ice-dancer.

Which meant Kurt suspected, sure. He and Loki spent a shitload of time hanging out, just being blue together. _Herr_ Wagner suspected, all right, but he didn't _know_ know, and with his nice manners, without any concrete reason to think ill of Clint, he wasn't going to flat-out ask.

So, more fool him. See what being nice got you?

“Yeah. Sure. Well, you know...” Clint told him—really telling the German absolutely nothing.

For a few seconds, Kurt gave him a look, those yellow eyes of his fixed on Clint’s eyes, just flickering and flickering, twin gateways to the infernal regions, and Clint thought the game was totally up, that he’d be forced to confess (a thought even flitted through his head that he wanted to confess, that the mutant was bound to help, not to judge him).

But then Kurt shook his head, muttered something Germanic to himself, and popped out again.

The call to assemble came not long after—or, rather, Nat did. She looked down at him, still wallowing in only-semi-feigned misery on the sofa, and shook her head.

“You need to tell someone, Clint,” was all she said.

“Yeah, that should go over well,” he answered.

"Do you really need..." she began, then shook her head a second time and walked out again.

"Do you really _need_ to do this, Clint?" she'd clearly wanted to ask him. "Do you really need to? He seems like such a sweet kid now, not like before. Are you willing to take on the extra pain, another row of red marks in your ledger?"

To lose this Avengers gig (Nat never would have said "gig," " _affiliation_ " being much more her style)? Maybe even to lose Phil? To be aware, even if Phil hung in there, he would look at Clint and know, for sure, about all the rot that seethed at the heart of him.

Clint could have walked away right then. He knew it. Nothing laughed now in his head. There was only a big, looming sense of pressure, like a dark, heavy cloud building up steam behind his eyes.

Maybe that was just part of his headache, that feeling like he was about to explode. Or maybe it wasn't. He didn't really think it was. Not really.

Clint didn't walk away. Maybe, at that point he felt like he couldn't, even though he knew he could have easily called up Thor in London, on Prince Thunder's brand-spanking-new StarkPhone (Tony, not the world's most imaginative guy in certain ways, always gave—guess what?--electronics for Christmas). He could have told him, "Big Guy, your brother's getting on my last nerve. Will you gently explain to him why he's hearing your dad's voice—which he totally doesn't recognize—repeatedly telling him, ' _Loki. No_?' Why he's constantly dreaming of death-by-abyss?"

Thor would have come, flown out straight away on the Mjolnir Express. Even compared to most guys, the Prince of Asgard was both empathetically stunted and emotionally clumsy, but he loved his brother with the force of a guy who'd grown up with not too much else to love.

Thor would have broken the story to Loki as gently as he could. Loki would have cried his sad, innocent little tears, and all would have been well. Tony would almost certainly have kissed him better, told him he was loved. Told him he was special.

Yeah.

All that.

All that was what Clint (with the pressure inside his head reaching explosion force) hoped to avoid. He'd never thought of himself as a vengeful man, but maybe he was, actually.

Before long, he heard the weird absence-of-roar that was the latest sound the QuinJet engines made. Tony did like to tinker.

He hadn't told anyone about the Loki/Barton connection, because... He hadn't told anyone, because, why? Because it was embarrassing? Because he was the one who'd been picked, and taken (Selvig didn't count, Erik was a good old guy- he was-- but also pretty much a loon, certifiable, being taken didn't so much reflect badly on as him as it was more or less an expected turn of events). But Clint was supposed to be the best-of-the-best, tough and stealthy and impervious. Strong-minded. Not a man to instantly fall victim to the wiles of some crazy space alien.

He was supposed to be one of the cool guys. A Secret Agent Man for the twenty-first century.

Even those others, his one time brothers-in-arms who defected to Hydra, hadn't lost their street cred in the deal. They were traitors (bad, very bad), but not jokes (immeasurably worse). Okay, sure, they were evil, but they weren't some fancy-pants alien's bitch. They hadn't been zapped with a fucking Glinda the Good magic wand. They'd never said, "Yes, Master" to anyone. "Hail, Hydra," maybe, but not, "Yes, Master."

Loki, to be fair, had never asked Clint, or Selvig, to call him "Master." He'd been, in his weird way, actually a pretty pleasant boss. He encouraged a positive work environment. They'd actually laughed a lot on the job, when not melon-balling some dude's eye or mowing down half of S.H.I.E.L.D.

It kind of hurt, sometimes, having Loki's god-sized thoughts rattle around in his melon, but Clint had also, strangely, kind of liked the guy. He had style and sass and he appreciated their (admittedly, murderous and underhanded) work. Besides, Loki'd been told all his life, _"Midgardians are inferior. They're nothing. They're the busy little bitey ants trying to fuck up your lovely picnic_." Loki probably looked into Clint's and Selvig's tiny minds and said, "Damn, that is primitive!"

He'd tried, in a number of ways, to be extremely gentle with them. He'd even thoughtfully encapsulated the events of his own long, long life (though these, apparently, amounted to the vast life experience of a rebellious emo teenager by his people's standards). The capsules (which Clint pictured as somewhat like the output of the goose that laid the golden egg, but were actually some kind of mental holding tank, a reservoir or dam of memory), were there partly because of Loki's desire not to brain-fry him or Selvig with an onslaught of his thousand-year life history during their mutual thought-exchanges, while still allowing them dribbles and drabbles of info they might need for their world domination duties, and partly (Clint suspected) because Loki wanted to cover up his embarrassing personal shit.

These beautiful golden eggs sat proudly inside Clint's and Selvig's heads, now and then referred to for technical backup, otherwise ignored. Clint didn't know about Erik—they hadn't exactly kept in touch after Loki's downfall—but his own egg sat there still, chock-full of Loki's memories.

Some people would say, "It's over and done with, Barton. No harm, no foul. Leave him alone, he's a good kid just trying to rebuild some kind of life for himself." The thing was, though, there had been harm: eighty agents dead, just to start with; the guy in Germany, Dr. Whatever, fatally melon-balled; how many killed here in New York?; how many buildings wrecked, livelihoods and property destroyed?; his beloved Phil killed, however temporarily; Clint's own life fracked beyond recognition. He'd never get back, entirely, his sense of self, his sense of purity of purpose, his sense of trusting his own instincts—to hell with that, he'd never get back his sense of trusting himself. He'd never get back his reputation. Never.

And so Clint waited.

He watched.

He'd known, of course, when Loki returned to the city, and he'd observed the god's arrogance falter, then crumble. He'd watched Loki's body fail as he wandered the streets, as he suffered, and suffered... and oh, the misery was sweet, the degradation, the filth, the confusion and pain. It was perfect, and it was just, and Clint loved it, even if Phil did keep asking him if he was okay, if he needed to take some time, never out-and-out telling Clint that he was acting weird, and it was scaring him.

Clint didn't get scared, himself, and if he did, wouldn't admit it. Clint had actually harbored hopes that Loki would die out there, forlorn and forgotten, just another flea-ridden, emaciated corpse frozen to a Central Park bench, no one to claim his body, or know, or care. Thor already thought his brother dead, so who would give a damn? Certainly not Clint. He'd be glad to lose the pesky connection.

Steve's little act of pre-holiday charity kind of knocked a hole in all that, but Clint tried to take even that in stride. He could go into a snit, or he could choose to take the view that Steve had merely upped the ante and made things more interesting.

He'd made himself useful, watched over Loki, spoken up for Loki to keep him nearby, let him settle into the penthouse on the general principle of nursing a viper in the breast of Rome, or however the hell that saying went.

And now? Now had come the time of the perfect storm.

Kurt had gone out, the Avengers were away, and his target sat all alone, a forlorn little bird in the plushy nest he'd feathered for himself.

Loki wasn't supposed to have a plushy nest. He was supposed to feel bad. He was supposed to suffer. He was supposed to be judged and hated and driven from pillar to post, with no place to lay his head. The force inside Clint's head said it must be so.

Wait. No. _Clint_ said it must be so. He did. Loki had ruined him.

The kid wanted back his memories? Clint would give him his memories. There was no damn room left inside his mind for them now. So, have your memories, Loki.

Enjoy them.

Yeah.


	8. Desperation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Again, please forgive me! My chapters got frisky and rearranged themselves--this is the correct Ch. 8, the "knight in shining armor" chapter is is Ch. 6 and the Clint chapter is Ch. 7.
> 
> Loki feels awful, but his outlook improves after J.A.R.V.I.S. arranges a weekend play-date for him. Tony's mission is aborted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A s'more is a camping treat, Hershey's chocolate and a toasted (flaming, blackened) marshmallow sandwiched between two Graham crackers, the filling melted to sublime goopiness.
> 
> The Rock of Gibraltar, a large limestone promontory off the southwestern tip of  
> Europe on the Iberian Peninsula was one of the Pillars of Hercules (the Romans  
> called it the _Mons Calpe_ , the other pillar, on the African side, being the _Mons Abyla_ ). Back in the day, those two points were said to mark the limit to the known world.
> 
> Stephen King's 1996 novel _Desperation_ takes place around a re-opened mine in the  
>  Southwest. We can probably assume, based on the publication date, that Tony and King's meeting took place in the early nineties. The author has been open about his struggles with alcohol, particularly around the time he was writing The Shining.
> 
> Northstar is a French-Canadian X-Man (the first, incidentally, to celebrate a same-sex marriage).
> 
> "Hell bent for leather" is one of those pieces of English-idiom shorthand (with a nice ring to it). It basically means going to hell extra fast because you've whipped the horse to speed up the journey.

* * *

Loki jerked out of a nightmare, heart pounding as he struggled to breathe, sweat soaking the sheets.  The air smelled electrical, as if there had been lightning--but Loki didn't think there had been lightning.  There was only...

Honestly, he didn't know what there had been.  The dream seemed to cling to him, clinging to his skin, shadowing the inside of his head, nothing he could remember clearly, only darkness, and more darkness, and above it all, a broad face grooved and ridged with age and anger, scarcely visible through those thick shadows.

High on the right side of that face something winked and glinted, a rich glint that hinted of gold, and somehow that single spark of brightness frightened Loki more than anything else he could make out in that awful dreamscape. That golden glint, like a sigil or a crest, seemed an unmistakable mark to name, beyond doubt, the owner of that rage-filled face--yet Loki, try as he might to plumb the depths of his memory, could discover neither the name nor its owner.

In truth, he understood none of what he'd dreamed, and that alone made him feel weak and helpless as a child.

The face, he knew, had bent down, close, then closer, its breath hot against his ear. In that moment, Loki felt the slow movements of lips against his skin, heard a tongue spill out words he couldn't comprehend. He'd pressed his hands against his mouth, fighting not to scream, suddenly bolt upright and shuddering, the lack of light within the room making him fear he'd not awakened at all, that by some trickery of the night the dream still held him fast, that the evil old man yet stood beside him.

"J.! I beg of you, Good J.!" he cried out into the blackness, "If by some chance you can hear me where I am, cause the lights to kindle?"

"My poor boy," answered his dear friend the Ghost in the Wall, and at once the lights blazed forth. "You were only dreaming. Kurt wanted you to sleep well, and so he asked me to darken the room when he left. I never meant to cause you any distress."

Loki gasped a few times, demanding of himself that he force his spirit to settle, and in time it did, though the feeling of being weak and shaken continued. He hoped, this time, he could blame the weakness upon his injuries, not on any cowardice of his own. Perhaps he was only cold—though in general J. kept the common area, where he lay, at quite a comfortable temperature.

"You have a slight fever, Loki," J. informed him. "That’s very likely the reason you're feeling cold, contradictory as it may seem. Might I have something brought to you? All the catering staff are still on duty, or the Rosenblum family downstairs would be glad to bring anything you require. Are you hungry? Would you care for more tea?"

"I feel sick," Loki answered, and indeed the mere thought of solid food revolted him. "But, yes, I would like more tea. Might I have the ginger kind Tony made for me earlier, with only a little milk, and in a pot or a... a carafe...?" he felt rather proud of the new word, and thought he had said it correctly. "Instead of merely a cup? I feel as if I want to drink it all through the afternoon, though I don't want anything else, just now."

"Perhaps later," he added hastily, lest J. insist. For a being who did not eat, J.--at times--became quite tedious on the subject of regular meals.

"I have ordered your ginger tea for you, just as you asked," J. told him. "They've said they'll bring it up in a thermal carafe, so that it will stay warm. Is that acceptable?"

"Extremely," Loki answered, slumping back against his pillows. He ached over his entire body, most particularly low down in his back, and in his head, but he could bear that. It was the nausea that truly troubled him—along with a terrible realization.

"Today I was to study the ways of painting with my benevolent teacher, Mr. Tobit. Since Kurt has long since gone, I surmise the hour of one o'clock has also come and gone. I was to meet Mr. Tobit at the school, in the usual classroom, at half past that hour, and now I feel he will believe me to be a thoughtless youth who has taken his kindness lightly, and perhaps he will no longer wish to impart his wisdom."

Loki wanted to cry over his inattention to the time, and to the commitment he had made to good Mr. Tobit, though he knew it was childish to weep over such a thing.

Tony would not weep, and neither would Kurt. They would call the person they had wronged upon the telephone, and manfully apologize, then explain what had occurred that prevented their keeping the appointment as agreed.

Or, at least, he ought to tell a version of what had occurred. While a fall might be easily explained, to say that he had fallen long and rapidly through the space-between-spaces, coming out again only through the good agency of Kurt's skill at teleportation, then landed with great impact upon Tony's bed with his comrades coming down with equal speed on top of him would not, Loki suspected, be readily understood by Mr. Tobit, for all his wisdom. Loki believed his explanation might require editing.

He concentrated on breathing, slowly and steadily, until the kind servant of catering had brought in a tray with a paper mat, a clean white cup and his tea in a silver carafe. The top of the carafe proved slightly challenging, as one must twist it just so, to half the circumference of its turning, in order that the tea might escape in a measured flow. To turn the lid less resulted in no flow at all. To turn it more, Loki soon discovered, was to court, if not disaster, at least profuse spillage.

When the tea was poured, Loki held the cup between his hands, its warmth seeping into his aching finger-bones, its fragrant steam soothing his throat and his lungs, and felt nearly peaceful, nearly settled.

"Would you like me to ring your teacher, Loki?" J.A.R.V.I.S. asked gently. "So that you may speak with him? Or, I will speak, if you wish."

"No, I should speak, since I am well able. It's what Kurt or Tony would do, isn't it, J? They would, in Tony's words, 'man up,' and so must I, even though I feel bitterly ashamed of my thoughtlessness in not calling sooner."

"I shall ring him now," J. answered, and, it appeared, did so. Seconds later, a British voice came through the air, more like Loki's own than like J.'s, and strange to hear where Loki was accustomed to hearing only the voice of his friend the Ghost.

"Harold Tobit speaking."

"Hello, Mr. Tobit, it is I, Loki Stark, who you met yesterday at your drawing class and very kindly offered to instruct in painting. I have called to offer my most abject apologies, that I missed our afternoon appointment."

A brief pause followed. Loki greatly feared his teacher was angry with him, and that the pause existed to allow him to contain his anger before he spoke further. That he would do so, would seek to contain an entirely righteous anger for his sake, struck Loki as a great kindness, and made him think even better of his teacher.

Only, instead of sounding the least angry, Mr. Tobit's voice came through to him as full of concern. "Loki, dear boy, you sound dreadful! Are you ill?"

Now was the time for the editing, Loki knew, and he wished he had thought of a story beforehand, and had run it by J. to determine its plausibility. He didn't like at all to have to lie outright to Mr. Tobit. Equally, he did not wish to be thought ridiculous, his tale an obvious fabrication.

What sort of mishaps were actually likely to occur here on Midgard, that would be comparable to that which had befallen him?

"I was in... In the crashing of an elevator," he said, surprised to find his voice shaking, as if with fear—yet the falling _had_ been fearful, never knowing when it would end. The sudden bursting through into Tony's bedroom, the bed all but exploding around them, with splinters flying everywhere, had been equally unsettling.

"Mr. Tobit, it was terrifying in how fast it fell, as if there would be no ending, only a falling that lasted for all time. But the end did come, solid and unexpected, and Darius—whose head is punishingly hard--and Kurt dropped on top of me, which was not in any way pleasant, either. My skin now presents any number of colors, but blue is no longer well represented among them. Also, the collision of Darius's head against my own left me with an unpleasantness called a concussion, and although I want most earnestly to begin to learn the ways of painting from you, I fear that if I were to rise up and move about, I would almost certainly vomit. I should have called much sooner, but it is hard for me, just now, to prevent myself from sleeping, whether I wish to sleep or not. It simply comes upon me, bringing dreams of great unpleasantness."

"You must by no means get up, Loki," Mr. Tobit told him, in the kindest possible voice. "Stay comfortably in bed until you're better. I want you to enjoy your lessons, not be forced to struggle through them. I often come into the city during the weekend. If you've improved by then, I’ll come to you at Stark Tower—it isn’t far to travel--and give you a brief demonstration of the various sorts of paints and what you can do with them. Does that meet with your approval?"

"Mr. Tobit, you are too kind," Loki answered. "I cannot ask so much of you."

"My sister keeps a flat in Manhattan, and many weekends I come to stay with her. We enjoy visiting the museums, or sometimes attend a matinee. I'll already be quite near your home."

"Tony, my... my cousin, has many drivers in want of work. May I, as thanks, send one to collect you from your home? J., is that an acceptable thing for me to offer? May I?"

"It is most certainly acceptable to offer, Loki," J. put in, sounding exactly like the proper butlers who now and then appeared in programs on the television, wore black coats and displayed excellent posture. "Would eleven o'clock, Saturday, be convenient for you, sir? The driver can also collect Miss Tobit on the way to the tower, and Mr. Stark would be pleased to invite both of you to lunch with the family. We also house a fine collection of Modern Art, sir, which you might perhaps enjoy."

"J. is clever and thinks of all things," Loki said, filled with admiration for his friend. "Mr. Tobit, you would please and honor me greatly by accepting. I will look forward hugely to my lesson, and take great pains to be fully recovered by that time in order to learn well from your wise teaching."

He felt almost unbearably excited by the prospect, and also, at the same time, almost unbearably unwell. "Please do agree?"

"How can I not?" Mr. Tobit answered, his voice sounding gentle and kind—and above that, amused. "Take the best care of yourself, dear boy, and I shall see you on Saturday. However, do please let me know if you're still not feeling yourself. My offer to teach you will not expire."

"I will be well," Loki told him, unable to contain his grin, "For I am delighted by the thought! Goodbye, best of teachers."

"Goodbye, Loki," Mr. Tobit said, all but laughing now, though Loki felt almost certain he didn't mean the laughter in any unpleasant way.

"You see, it all went well," J. told him, after breaking the connection. "An elevator, eh?"

"I could think of no other thing of Midgard with the habit of rising and falling along a straight path. They do sometimes fall, do they not? I wasn't ridiculous in my tale?" Loki wriggled down into the pillows, shutting his eyes in hopes that the room would stop spinning, groping with one hand for the waste basket just in case it would not, and the bin was needed, though he most devoutly hoped it wouldn't be.

Loki hoped, also, that Tony (ever close to his thoughts) was not in any danger upon his mission, mostly for his beloved's sake, not only selfishly because he wished Tony could be there to speak to him kindly and humorously and to tell him amusing stories in a quiet voice, while rubbing Loki's temples gently with his thumbs—although he did wish it.

He wished, also, that Kurt might be home with him, resting as he did, and that Darius—poor Darius—would cease to feel so sad, as if walled up in a cave of darkness and pain, where no comfort could be found to cheer him.

Loki did not like to think of such things. He did not, and he found himself breathing too rapidly again, as if he had been running, searching in vain for a place to hide himself, though he did not know why it should be so. Now the thought even of tea, which Loki generally found the most soothing of all things, made him feel sick, and he felt he wanted to weep again, with a stinging in his eyes, and a huge, uncomfortable lump in his throat, which only made him feel more sick.

"I could tell you stories in a quiet voice," J. said, "Though I regret I cannot offer other comfort."

"You always comfort me," Loki answered. "I only..." He lay flat on his back, fingertips pressed against his eyes.

"There are tablets in the kitchen cupboard with your name, Loki," J. told him. "There is also a soda called ginger ale in the refrigerator, which might help your stomach even more than the tea."

"I'll fetch them in little," Loki answered, though he had no intent of rising for any reason. His head and his back hurt too much, and his stomach felt too awful, and although the conversation with Mr. Tobit had cheered him temporarily, he felt haunted by his earlier dream, and also by all those things, good or ill, that drifted, eternally beyond reach, at the very edges of his understanding.

* * *

Even with his helmet off, Tony always felt like kind of a doofus sitting around the QuinJet with his suit on. He contemplated taking it off (which, with his new tech, would at least look cool as the whole thing folded back into itself), but considering that Steve had just announced T-minus-twenty-minutes, that also felt like kind of a doof move.

This was totally why he normally flew outside, zooming alongside the plane and looking extra-cool (he hoped) in his spiffy red-and-yellow suit.

Hey, little kids wanted to be Iron Man—that had to mean something, right?

What he definitely _wasn’t_ going to do was ask J.A.R.V.I.S. Ol’ J. would almost certainly have a smartass comeback for that one, even if he had mellowed significantly under the new regime.

Who could blame him, really? Just the sight, that morning, of Loki’s head poking out from under his favorite fuzzy blanket, looking like Puss from the _Shrek_ movies as he gave them those big green pitiful anime eyes of his, was enough to turn Tony into a giant, gloppy human s’more. No one should look so adorable when they felt so crappy. No one.

How could they not love him?

The team was light-staffed for this mission, missing their resident god of thunder yet again. Thor was bound to be disappointed, after the fact, to have missed out, because according to Steve-o their destination was someplace in the beautiful state of Maine.

Maybe, since they were spending time in the pine tree state, the Prince of Asgard could have dropped in on his new idol, Stephen King, the plots of whose novels Thor had been describing to them all at length, no one having the heart to tell him, " _been there, read that, saw the movie_ ," (though, the truth was, Thor's unique take on each book generally turned out to be pretty damn hilarious).

Tony would have paid good money to see that one play out, something along the lines of (in his head, at least): “ _Greetings, Stephen, King of Maine, I am Thor, Prince of Asgard and God of Thunder, may I have your autograph?_ ”

Weirdly, Tony had recently discovered, the collection of autographs didn’t even seem like an odd thing to the Asgardian. He and Tony had had a discussion. To Thor, to give away your signature (okay, he said “name runes,” but same diff) was to give away a piece of your soul, and he’d been shocked, at one point, to see Tony signing his way through a mountain of paperwork, seeming to give his soul-pieces away frequently and freely.

Which led to them to a discussion of souls, and the not-believing in them.

“But then what part of you will dwell forever after in Valhalla?” Thor had asked him. “Or else with Queen Hela in the Dismal Regions? My mother, Frigga, ever-valiant, most assuredly dwells in Valhalla,” the god of thunder added, in the kind of grief-stricken-but-manfully-hiding-it voice that Tony would never, not in a million years, have had the heart to argue with.

Instead, he’d changed the subject. “Queen Hela, huh—isn’t she supposed to be one of Loki’s kids?”

Thor laughed, following up the laugh with (spoken in an " _I can't believe I need to explain this_ " kind of tone): “Not _my_ Loki’s. The Queen of _Helheimr_ is ancient and Crafty, and comes of a different Loki, of a different cycle.”

Tony put aside the image of the Queen of the Underworld, Martha Stewart-like, doing stuff with doilies and glitter and shit, and told himself Thor either meant “crafty” as in devious, or “Crafty” as in full of magic, even though, ruling the dead, a lady might just need a hobby or two to get through the days, particularly if she ruled a place known as the "Dismal Regions."

He'd have liked to have dug a little more deeply into the topic of giant snakes and wolves, but didn’t. Tony kind of needed to collect his Thor-based intel in small doses, to prevent his head from imploding.

 

Returning to the subject of Stephen King, Tony, as a young guy with a shiny-new engineering degree, a vast family fortune, and a chip on his shoulder the size of the Rock of Gibraltar, had once gotten not roaring, but at least _significantly_ , drunk with the man himself, under circumstances he could barely even remember (there may have been snow, and airplanes--or not, it had been that kind of day), back in King's—and, for that matter, his own-- drinking-days.

"That stuff is almost certainly gonna kill you, kiddo," drunk-King had informed him seriously, shaking his big square head.

That’s how Tony had seen him at the time, as a guy with a big square head and red eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses, red like he’d been crying, though in retrospect and sober, King’s head hadn’t particularly been bigger or squarer than any other person’s. Booze made you see weird things, now and then.

Tony had pooh-poohed the idea.

"This is the good stuff," he'd answered, pouring the author another lovely amber tumbler of the Glenmorangie 18 from the bottle King had magnanimously bought for them to share, after first asking Tony, "What's your poison?"

“This is the Nectar of the Gods!" Tony had continued. "'sides which, my dear sir, as you are older, it’s bound to get you first." It hadn’t hit him, at the time, that that was a fairly shitty thing to say to a fellow human, especially one who was buying.

King shook his head solemnly, suddenly seeming a lot less drunk than he’d been. “No. No, I’ll stop before then."

“Just like that?” Tony scoffed. “You’ll just stop.”

“No, not just like that. It’ll be hard as hell. It’ll be awful. Maybe I’ll always want to drink, but I will stop.” He’d leaned back in his chair, narrowing his reddened eyes at Tony. “But you, kiddo, you’ve got a hole in your heart the size of the Bingham Canyon Mine.”

Tony had given him a look.

"It's in Utah," King told him. "A copper mine. The world's largest man-made excavation. I've been researching for a book."

Yup, that was an author for you.

This particular statement, mind you, came years before Ten Rings, and Afghanistan, the arc reactor and Tony’s both literal and figurative change of heart.

“You, kid,” King continued, not in any way unkindly. “It’ll take an Act of God to make you stop.”

Truer words were never spoken, and Tony kind of wished that he could drop down right then for a little visit with his old drinking not-quite-buddy, and tell him the story of recent events, the real story, not the kinda-sorta fudged version he had to give most people.

He thought King might appreciate the tale, if anyone did. He thought the author might even believe him, that he'd appreciate the presence of real magic in the world, and gods that were real gods, not merely advanced space aliens.

"Is Thor ever coming back from Christmas Break, Part Deux?" Tony asked, of no one in particular, and waited for Clint to snark back, "Boyfriend getting too frisky for you to handle, Iron Pants?" Vecause Thor had spent a lot of time with his brother, in the gym and otherwise, when he briefly reappeared between Christmas and New Year's. Call him Captain Oblivious.

Only then did Tony realized they were missing an archer.

"Uh... did we forget to pick somebody up?" he asked.

"Clint had a migraine, I think," Bruce answered, glancing up from some sort of medical journal. At least Tony hoped it was a medical journal. There were pictures of people being cut into, so it was either that or _Cannibals' Quarterly_. He wasn't going to ask.

"Our team doctor, lady and gentlemen, always concerned about our health," Tony quipped.

Natasha glanced up. For once, she wasn't browsing a magazine about handguns. This one, instead, seemed to be about knives.

"It's because of Loki," she said.

"Loki gave Katniss a migraine? How, by hitting him in the face with a frying pan ala _Looney Tunes_? I'll provide an alibi for that one. Last night, my poor baby could hardly even move."

Once again, Clint's absence left a snark-gap in the conversation. Something along the lines of, _"If that's the case, maybe you're doing it wrong_." Cue rimshot.

"Via their mental connection." Natasha flipped a page. "Clint said it blanked out completely--as in black-hole-in-space completely--for about five minutes, then surged back with a vengeance. That it hurt like hell. Besides that, Loki was obsessing about something, which is never an easy thing."

Tony gaped at her. Something, a distant, buried thing he didn't want to grab hold of, started wanting to burn a hole in the center of his stomach.

His mouth worked soundlessly.

"Mental connection," Bruce repeated, in his calm, warm, okay-now-I'm-maybe-interested Bruce-voice.

He didn't even make it a question. That came later.

"Ever since?" Tony finally asked.

"When else?" Nat replied, as if it didn't make the least difference in the world. Except that... "It shuts off when Loki's in Asgard. Or wherever," she post-post scripted.

"But not in New York. Interesting," Bruce said, shutting his _Cannibals' Quarterly_.

"But that would mean..." Steve began, from up front. That Super Soldier hearing really was something.

 _Yeah, that would mean_ , Tony thought. _That would so fucking mean_.

"He knew Loki was in New York and didn't inform us," Steve said, in his slightly-huffy voice.

“As in…” Tony said, in a perfectly pleasant tone, using his inside voice and everything. “Clint can tell when Loki’s on Earth.”

“Not on Earth, so much…” Nat didn’t exactly look uncomfortable, because she was a woman who consciously chose each and every one of her facial expressions, and no way was she ever going to show that big of tell.

“Okay, not _Earth_ ,” Tony went on, still pleasant as hell. “But in _New York_ , maybe? Or in Manhattan? Could Clint tell if Loki was in _Manhattan_? What kind of range are we talking here, Nat? How about _Central Park_? The _Central Library_? _Macy's_? Are those places close enough for fucking Katniss to feel his fucking connection when Loki was freezing and starving out there in the streets, lost and confused as hell and completely fucking alone?”

“Tone.” Bruce’s hand had landed heavily on his arm.

Tony felt the jolt of it, though of course nothing else through his suit.

“This maybe isn’t the time and place? On our way to a mission?”

“Sir.” It took a minute for Tony to realize he wasn’t hearing J.A.R.V.I.S.’s voice through his helmet speakers (since—duh—he wasn’t wearing his helmet), or through his ear-bee.

No, this was J. was calling out to all and sundry, through the QuinJet system itself.

“Sir, and Avengers," J. said, "I must request that you return to the tower immediately."

J.A.R.V.I.S. sounded, most unJ.A.R.V.I.S.-like, badly upset, horrified, even.

“I locked the door, sir. I did lock the door. All the doors. I believed all forms of entrance and egress covered, but I did not pay close enough attention, and…” J.’s voice broke up into measured bursts of static, as if he’d moved into some sort of digital emotional meltdown.

It hit Tony then—the A.I. was crying, this was the sound of J. crying, and that broke his heart more than just a little, for any number of reasons.

“Steve,” he said, fighting for his own control. “Turn us around, okay? Just turn us around.”

“The mission…” Steve began.

“My family,” Tony countered. “Our family. Cap, I’m begging you, please. If not for me, then for Clint, before he does something crazy."

A new voice sounded crisply through the Quinjet’s speakers, French-accented and more-than-slightly pleased with itself, “ _Bonsoir_ , Avengers! This is the SR-71 Blackbird, and the X-Men will be taking over your mission this evening. Please enjoy your return flight to Manhattan.”

“Northstar…” Natasha began—because of course she would know who was speaking, along with, probably, all French-Accent-Guy’s personal strengths, weaknesses, and irritating habits, the better to use them against him.

“I can’t reach him. I can’t reach him at all,” J’s voice said in Tony’s bee, so quiet as to scarcely be audible.

Steve banked the plane in the tightest possible curve, and they were heading southward again, heading home, this time (thank you, Steve) hell bent for leather.


	9. The Dread Pirate Roberts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint sneaks into to penthouse to confront Loki. The encounter goes somewhat  
> differently than he expects.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> " _Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto_ " is the one line everyone knows from the 1983 Styx hit  
> " _Mr. Roboto_." The Japanese words _domo arigato_ mean, basically, "many thanks.
> 
> Contrary to popular belief, Jeeves, of Jeeves-and-Wooster isn't a butler. He's actually a valet, orgentleman's personal manservant.
> 
> The term "hospital johnny" originated in New England (Boston or possibly Maine).  
> Some say nurses coined the term because the gown makes it easier for patients to use the toilet, or "john" but this origin may be apocryphal.
> 
> _No es nada_ =Spanish for "it's nothing"

* * *

Clint took the elevator to the roof, making his circuitous route downward to the penthouse from there by the hidden pathways that, to him, never seemed difficult. Every building had them, and the tower, for all its bells and whistles, was no different. It still possessed its ducts and conduits, crawlspaces and odd little channels most people would never even have suspected.

He'd reached Tony's stronghold before the electronic watchdog, that Iron Pants called J.A.R.V.I.S., was even aware, and even when it did twig to the fact, it wasn't suspicious, or not particularly so. It was too familiar with Clint's ways.

"Are you feeling better, Mr. Barton?" the programmed voice said to him, in stuffy British tones. "If you were wanting Mr. Stark, he is not currently present, having not yet returned from the mission. If you would care to..."

"Nope. ' _Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto_ ', but I'm not here for Tony."

"Loki, is resting, at present. If you would return when he has awakened, I would be happy to notify..."

Clint reached up and switched off his hearing aids, left, then right. They were Tony's invention, all but invisible, and only he, Steve, Phil and Nat even knew Clint wore them.

With the aids switched off, Mr. Roboto's voice faded to a tiny, distant, " _Wah-wah-wah-wah_ ," like the voices of the adults in a _Peanuts_ cartoon.

He pulled on his S.H.I.E.L.D.-issued shades and respirator just in case, on the principal that Roboto could undoubtedly mess with both the air and the lighting, in ways detrimental to his continued health, rendering things a little more interesting than Clint really wanted them to be at this juncture.

"Just stop the Jeeves-the-butler act," Clint said, making his way down the stairs and into the living room below. If the electronic voice said something back, he was oblivious.

Inside his head, the laughter started up again, dry and deep, crazy and mean and just... Just what? What did it even mean? Why was it laughing? What was funny in this situation? Clint felt like he was on a roller coaster, at the point where the car chugs to the top of a steep, steep hill, then, just for a second, stops, that tiny pause, that instant of still anticipation, making the plunge that follows so much worse (or more thrilling, depending on your feelings about roller coasters).

He took a seat on the coffee table, studying his prey.

Loki wasn't resting. He was, in fact, sleeping, deeply, it seemed, but not in any way that could be described as peaceful. He'd already, twisting and squirming in tiny increments, manage to wind his fuzzy blanket into a something like a rope. His skin looked kind of like a sunset viewed from the top of the pyramids, looking out across the golden sand to the horizon, just every different color, purples and reds and greens well-represented.

Loki's own mind appeared filled with fear, something haunting him, hiding in the shadows, the flavor--the _vibe_ , to use the jargon of Clint's younger days--of that figure reminding Clint strongly of the "invisible friend" he carried inside his own head. The friend who now laughed once, softly, in a way that didn't necessarily sound sinister, but was.

_What are you doing?_ another voice said. Natasha's voice. _Seriously, Clint, what is this? Vengeance? Vengeance is supposed to make you feel better?_

For most of his early life, Clint had pictured the devil and the angel on his shoulders as looking like Goofy, Mickey Mouse's chum (Clint had watched a lot of cartoons as a child). Angel Goofy wore a halo and what looked like a white hospital johnny, and tried to make him do the right thing. Devil Goofy was red, with a tail like Kurt Wagner's, a small, not-particularly-threatening pitchfork (this was Goofy, after all) and mismatched horns.

In more recent years, as his adult self began to realize the line between good and evil could often be seriously, majorly blurred, his angel became Nat, who was practical, and thought things through from all angles, and wasn't ever ruled by emotion, as Clint sometimes was. His devil became Nick Fury, who, whatever he said, was usually lying to at least some extent (the Captain America cards smeared with blood, for example—only Phil had put the cards away before the battle started, and the blood was ketchup from the cafeteria).

_That motherfucka ruined your life_ , Nick Fury told him. _Take the bastard out!_

For some reason, it made Clint think of that "Knights and Knaves" logic problem, in which the knaves always lied, the knights always told the truth...

Wasn't one of Loki's titles "god of lies?"

Oddly, Clint couldn't actually remember Loki ever lying to him. They'd been too close, his mind too linked to Loki's mind. He'd felt the deep pain, the sense that this wasn't really what he wanted to do, not _really_ (what had Phil told Loki, _"You lack conviction?_ "), that it wasn't even so much being king of the world Loki valued, it was being recognized by others as having value, any value.

What was it the late, great Charlie Chaplin said: _"Comedy is playful pain?_ " Loki, for all his swagger and sass, was a prime example of that one.

That being the case, what the actual fuck was he doing?

Clint reached up, switching on his hearing aids, low volume. Mr. Roboto sounded crazy upset. There was something about the X-Men. Something about calling back the team.

Okay, whatever. By the time they made it back, all this would be over.

Clint tuned out the remainder. He rested a hand on Loki's shoulder. "Loki. Loki, wake up. It's just me. It's Clint."

The god's (so-called) eyes flew open, for a few seconds filled with terror—and then the terror was replaced by resignation.

"You may remove the..."  Loki's long hand made a circular gesture over his own mouth.  "The... er... the respirator."  For just a second, Loki's eyes flashed a happy emerald color--clearly he was proud to have come up with the word.

"Please, Clint, uncover your face?" he added quietly. "By my request, J. will not harm you, if that's what you fear."

It felt weird to do it, weirder to actually listen to his enemy, but Clint removed both his lenses and the respirator.

_Why, you dumbshit?_ he asked himself, but maybe the answer to that question was that to do so felt like the right thing.  Maybe he even wanted to do it.

Maybe the right thing was see his victim as he was, and for his victim to see him. However, calling Loki his "victim" also seemed weird, and "prey" didn't seem much better.

Neither word exactly put him on the side of the angels. The good side. The reasonable side. The Natasha side, that wouldn't lose him everything he had.

"The dark man of my dream abides within your head," Loki said, telling him something they both already knew--Clint would have bet good money on it. "He is clever, and though he hides well, how is it I never noticed before this moment?"

"There's nothing in my head," Clint lied through his teeth. He felt old and weary and dull, and somehow Loki, with his long lashes and big green eyes, his front teeth biting down on the darker blue of his lower lip, filled him with both rage and pity.

"This is just me," Clint added.

Loki shook his head. "You were my friend. You taught me to play upon the piano, and visited me, sporting with Kurt and Tony, when I was ill in the infirmary."

"I was never your friend," Clint responded. "It's just what I was trained to do. Put the target at ease, then... Boom! Out go the lights."

"Ah." Loki gazed up into Clint's eyes, his face gentle and kind. "You know... your best chance is to slay me as I am, Clinton. I vow to you, I will not fight."

He regarded Clint so intently, and for such a long time, that Clint started to feel antsy.  He half expected Loki's eyes to turn like carnival wheels, like Kaa the Snake's eyes in the Disney _Jungle Book,_ the animated one, from back when he was a kid _._

"Realize, please," Loki went on, eventually, "That if you return those memories belonging to me, now cached within your head, the chance is strong that White Loki will return. He is indeed a fell being, and likely to defend himself. I, on the other hand, have no desire to harm you. I would like to live, and would not sadden Tony, J., Kurt or Thor, my family. Yet..."

Loki laid his hand lightly on Clint's wrist. "I am sad and I am weary, and a part of me would perhaps like that to end. Follow the Allfather's commands, if that is indeed who guides you along this path. Slake your anger."

Fingers shaking slightly, clearly hesitant, Loki unbuttoned his p.j. top, indicating his own thin-but-surprisingly-muscular chest. "I would suggest a swift blow, delivered either to the throat or to the heart, made with a blade of silver, if you should happen to possess one.  I am, as you know, a creature of magic."

"Loki," Mr. Roboto cried out. "Oh, please, Loki, you must not submit to this. Mr. Barton..."

Clint, somehow, found himself sitting right beside Loki on the sofa, those emerald eyes now holding his entirely. He breathed in Loki's scent, which was like evergreen trees, and snow, and lemons laid over something softer and warmer.

Loki was right, Clint realized:  he was magical. _Magical_ magical. Killing him would be like killing a unicorn, or a griffin, or a dragon. It might make the world safer, but wasn't it...?

Clint wouldn't let himself think of the word.

_Wrong?_ the voice of Natasha suggested firmly.

The voice inside Clint's head cried out in rage, the words _Now! Now! Now!_ beating inside his mind like a drumbeat, throbbing against the bones of his skull.

"I do understand," Loki said. "White Loki hurt you terribly, though perhaps it didn't even occur to him that he would do so. Perhaps he understood Midgardians even less than I do, thinking you simple, when you are only... other? Is that the right word?"

"Different," Clint rasped.  His throat hurt.

"Ah. Yes. 'Diff erent.'" Loki smiled at him, the gentle, curious, almost childlike smile.

It occurred to Clint that he'd seen versions of that smile a thousand times--or more--on this Loki's blue face.

"The truth is, for as many as have been unpleasant to me, still others have been lovely. It is like coming to understand the different forms of your art, as when dear Pepper explained to me that the Modern Art she loves may seem unsophisticated, even plain, on the surface, yet underneath it holds great meaning and beauty."

Clint laughed, surprising himself. "I still don't like Modern Art."

"You should allow Pepper to explain it," Loki told him.  "She possesses great understanding of the subject."

Clint found himself laughing again. "No way in Hell."

Loki laughed too, briefly, though after a moment his face went still. Thoughtful and still.

His hand cupped Clint's cheek, the tips of Loki's fingers pressing to his temple, Loki's expression set and serious, now almost stern.

A shimmer of green came, dazzling Clint's eyes, and then...

He was alone. No darkness, no pressure, no...

No Loki. For the first time in a long time, Clint was all alone in his head. It felt surprisingly lonely.

"You didn't have to do that part," he told Loki.  "Or... Uh... maybe just a little?"

"I understood your anger," Loki told him, sounding almost... was bashful the word?  Clint thought maybe it was.

"You were injured badly in your sense of self." Loki went on in the same quasi-shy voice.  "And, of course, in your reputation. Yet, I might mention, you are fully accepted as an Avenger, and also, are you not, greatly loved by Phil, ostensibly your superior? That being the case, might it truly be that you judge yourself more harshly than others, in fact, judge you? I have been taught such reasoning by Kurt, who is wise in these things."

"Figures." Clint laughed.  Saintly Kurt was saintly.

"For it is not manly to be wise in this way? Tony told me the manly thing is to entirely suppress one's emotions, pick a vice and stick with it. This does not seem to me an intelligent solution, but perhaps that is because I am _ergi_ and so incapable of understanding. Or perhaps he meant the words in jest. I'm not always capable of telling the difference."

"He was probably joking," Clint told him.

"That's good to know." Loki turned his face away, fingers clenched together in his lap, bunching up his fuzzy blue blanket.

"You ought to know, Clint," Loki went on, "I have removed the 'golden egg' from your mind, and also destroyed it, as a thing that would do neither you nor me good. I do not want those memories returned. I do not wish to become again what those memories made White Loki. I will live on this Midgard and learn of its ways in fits and starts, as a child learns, and while I yet desire to know some of what transpired on the Rainbow Bridge, I have to understand that I must approach that, at least somewhat, as the history of another person. I will ask Thor, and my brother will tell me what I need to know, but I don't believe it would be healthy to feel such events within myself a second time, especially after feeling so strongly the similar emotions inside the mind of Darius, my friend."

"Is that the wisdom of Kurt again?"

"Only the wisdom of Loki.  Such as it is."  He glanced up from his bunchy blanket, eyes pointed upward, moving as if they tracked the trajectory of some unseen thing in the sky.

"I ought to inform you, Clint, the QuinJet will soon land on the roof of the tower, and Phil's car has already parked in the garage. He approaches the elevator. If you mean me harm, you must perform the act swiftly, for they will most certainly attempt to stop you if you delay—some for your sake, and some for mine."

"Ah, kiddo..." Clint patted Loki's knee. "What can I say? 'Good night, Westley. Good work. Sleep well. I'll most likely kill you in the morning.'"

Loki laughed in delight. "Those are the words of the Dread Pirate Roberts, in _The Princess Bride_ ," which I have watched with Kurt many times!"

Clint gave him a grin. He couldn't help himself. Loki was...

Actually, he didn't know what the hell Loki was, except the voice of Angel Nat on his shoulder had been right, taking this quirky, smart, loving, socially-awkward kid out of the world wouldn't right any old wrongs, would hurt a lot of people (definitely tipping the balance way over from expedient to malicious), and would ruin his own life to a far greater extent than it was already ruined.

Why bother?

In the end, why bother?

Clint waited for the cruel, stealthy voice, a resident in his head for so long, to chime in with its opinion, but got nothing. It was kind of like being able to breathe again after far too long--hours and months and years--spent in a dark and airless place.

He left the same way he'd come, along the hidden pathways, and was back in his own apartment, hitting a sprawling pose on the couch only seconds before Phil burst in.

Clint awarded himself extra points for neither sweating nor panting.  Cool and contained, that was him.

Phil practically screeched to a halt, blinked three times, then frowned. "Umn. Oh."

_That's my guy!_ Clint thought.

"Hey." He sat up. "Hi."

"You look better."

"I am better." Clint stretched out a hand, and like the good boyfriend he was, Phil came over to him at once, wrapping Clint up in his arms.

It felt good, to be held so warmly and so tightly. It pushed some of the loneliness away.

He dropped his head onto Phil's shoulder, scratchy black suit-fabric under his cheek. Now that he was Director of S.H.I.E.L.D., Phil really did need to start buying himself some better-quality threads.

Not leather, though. Never leather. Leave that to Fury.

Clint hugged his boyfriend tightly in return—clung for dear life, really.

"Philly, I nearly did something really stupid today," Clint confessed. He'd lied too much, _way_ too much in his life, both to people he loved and to people he hated, and realized that the last thing he wanted was to being that shit into this thing he had with Philly.

This good thing.  This thing he wanted to last--if not forever, then for as long as they both had.

"I know, honey, I know. Nat told me," Phil answered, then kissed Clint's temple. "But you didn't."

Clint kissed Phil back, on the lips this time, a firm, " _I love you, never doubt that_ ," kiss. And, just like that, everything was all right, the world put back onto its proper axis, ready to turn again.

Into his head, quietly, far more distantly than Clint was used to (not that he couldn't totally get used to that), came the words, _I think you'd make a wonderful Dread Pirate Roberts_.

Face pressed to Phil's neck, without pain, and feeling near to peaceful, Clint couldn't help but grin. That damn kid.


	10. Googleplexian-times-infinity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony is shaken, Bruce is kind, and Loki, on the whole, feels rather pleased with himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Googolplexian=the largest number with a name, a 1 followed by a googolplex of  
> zeroes. A googolplex, the second largest named number, is a 1 followed by a googol of zeroes. A googol is, in turn, a 1 followed by 100 zeroes. And so we tumble down the rabbithole.
> 
> Tony's song, of course, is the terrifying earworm " _Coconut_ ," by Harry Nilsson (from the album _Nilsson Schmilsson_ ) which was let loose upon the world in 1971.
> 
> Quarks are indeed, as Kurt says, elementary particles that combine with other quarks to make up matter. The combined quarks form the composite particles called hadrons. Apparently quarks are rather shy, because like teenage girls bound for the restroom,  
> they're never found in isolation (or, in the case of quarks, rather than teenage girls, even directly observed, only seen in their hadrons). As far as scientists can tell, quarks do not resemble small blue ducks. Even very, very small blue ducks.

* * *

"Babe. Babe," Tony said again and again, and it saddened and worried Loki that his beloved had allowed himself to become so distraught, when he himself had never been in any true danger.

Tony knelt before the sofa, his hands roving up and down Loki's body as if he wished to touch every place at once in his search for damage that had never occurred—not from Clint, at any rate. The previous day's hurts pained Loki rather, but he didn't care, or not much, for the strength of Tony's touch warmed and cheered him. He felt entirely calm now, and rather pleased with himself, for HE, and no other (barring, perhaps, Clint himself) had solved his troubles. Moreover, he had solved them peaceably and with kindness, as Kurt might have done, he and Clint parting as friends and not as foes.

Loki wrapped his arms round Tony's shoulders, drawing him close (though that hurt rather also), gazing up at his beloved's fellow Avengers.

"Clint is well, and I am well," he told them—not in a challenging way, but calmly, as an equal speaking to equals. "He has returned to his flat, and his Phillip attends him. There were words we two needed to exchange  us, and now they have been spoken, and a lasting peace achieved."

The women with the fiery hair, Natasha, or Agent Romanov, as she was also known, turned half away from him,  
speaking as if to some phantom—yet Loki knew that she listened to her own ear-bee, most likely to Clint's beloved, her words conveyed upon an all-but-invisible clever thing, also of Tony's invention, which he called a microphone, and which Natasha  wore close to her lips.

"That was Phil," she informed her companions. "It appears Loki's telling the truth this time. Clint's fine. They only talked."

"In this, I was never the aggressor," Loki said softly, feeling something more hurtful than his physical bruises twist deep within his chest.

The Avengers paid no real heed to him, but perhaps that was for the best.  Loki had no wish to bring any awkwardness upon Clint, and that awkwardness surely would have grown great had he shared too many words of their discussion.

Yet, still, such distrust from Tony's friends pained him. As did seeing Agent Romanov and Captain Rogers turn away as if they had but wasted their time showing him the least concern. As if, having discovered their comrade Clint safe, they felt no regard for Loki himself, and might leave without so much as perfunctory farewells.

Dr. Banner, however, paused, and did not follow after. "Tony? You okay there? How about you, Loki?"

Loki realized that Tony shook in his arms, as if with a great chill, and he wished that he was not so bruised, that he might draw his beloved up with him onto the commodious cushions of the sofa, wrapping him within the blanket's soft folds until he felt safe again, for he had come to realize that above all else his beloved feared the loss of love, and injury to those he held dear.

Loki thought then of poor J., who had also been so distraught.

"J., my friend," he called. "Are you also well?"

"I was terrified," confessed his dear Ghost in the Wall, "But I am so proud of you, Loki. So proud."

"Thank you for watching over me always, best of friends, and for your care," Loki told him, a warmth seeping in where the bruised feeling had been—because he was safe here, and he was loved. He had saved the life of his friend Darius, and on the weekend good Mr. Tobit would gladly come to the tower to teach him of painting, a skill he greatly desired to learn. Moreover, he had foiled the cruel Allfather in yet another scheme, displaying to Clint all his base, deceitful ways, and thus dispelling the archer's anger.

And that was well-done, every bit of it. He defied any to say it was not, that he had been in any way stupid, clumsy, or selfish—for he had not been so.

He had not.

As for his memories, particularly the wisp of memory that had so troubled him before, it was as he'd told the archer—he would speak to his brother, and then he would know. He needn't worry,or be all in a rush. The knowledge would come to him in its own time, as knowledge often came.

He understood now in his heart that White Loki had been many things: sad and spiteful, hurt and hurtful, brilliant and troubled since his earliest days, and so deeply in need of care. Just as Bruce was, and Clint, and Tony, his love--for all worlds, it seemed were blindly, unnecessarily, full of greed, and selfishness, and hardened hearts. But he would not be so. Never again.

Loki forced himself to straighten and sit upright.  He drew Tony from the uncomfortable floor to sit beside him on the sofa, keeping his love well-protected within his own firm embrace.

"Perhaps, Dr. Banner, Tony would like a cup of the coffee you always brew so skillfully? Perhaps you would join us? Tony took cream in his this morning and seemed to enjoyed the addition, as he stated the rule of his cold-hearted father Howard now has ended, and he may, from here on, do as he will."

Bruce seemed to shake himself out of a stupor, as if he had listened to a distant voice not produced by anyone present, or even issuing forth from an electronic bee in his ear. Was the voice that of Bruce's own cruel father, rising out of the past to torment his thoughts?

Loki suspected that often, when Tony's dear friend looked so, that the wicked man's words must be the only words wounded Bruce found himself capable of hearing.

"It is said that my father, also, is terrible in his wrath," Loki told him quietly, "And I know that is true, the most recent proof being that he plied his Craft in a long and underhanded attempt to influence Clint to destroy me, when he might easily have let me be, harmless and mortal, with no injury to himself or his authority. Only I am strong, and Clint is strong, and all the Allfather's  
plottings came to nought this day.

"Another day will come when I am well, and fully healed in my mind. That day will I have my brother bring to me, by invitation, the man of learning, Erik Selvig, and I will remove from him the golden egg of memory I once lodged within his mind, and one by one I will bring forth from that egg the events of my life, and know them, feeling even their grief and anger if I must, while reminding myself that time is in the past and my new life lies ahead. And then they will not destroy me, as today, Dr. Banner, they well might have done."

"Whoa," Tony said, though he still sounded greatly shaken. "Understood only about thirty per cent of that, babe. However, done acting stupid now. Pretend my little meltdown didn't happen, okay? I was concerned--only in a tough, manly kind of way."

"You are ever a stoic," Loki told him, with false gravity, bringing the hand of his beloved to his lips and kissing the palm.

"Damn straight. What he said." Tony gave a brief and slightly choked-sounding laugh, then forced his body upright again, though he remained close to Loki's side, and took the opportunity to study his face intently. "It's still perfectly manly to tell you that J.A.R.V.I.S. isn't the only one proud of you, Loki. Sounds like you kicked butt, in a totally thoughtful and diplomatic way, and I may have to take lessons from you or something. I _definitely_ will if Pepper hears about this. But, hey-- " He stroked Loki's cheek tenderly with a fingertip. "You look tired, sweetheart. Isn't somebody here supposed to be lying down and resting? Do I need to call your doctor?"

"Do not sing that vile song," Loki commanded sternly, using his voice of false gravity again, though he wasn't really angry—it was only that the song had made him giggle internally, and giggling internally, just now, was torture to his ribs. Tony also, in some things, should not be overencouraged, he had found.

His beloved's hands, upon his shoulders, seemed to urge him to lie down again, and Loki did feel extremely tired, but he thought, perhaps, if Tony planned to be a stoic, he ought to be a stoic also, to further demonstrate to his love that all was well, that he need harbor no further worries.

"Last night, Dr. Banner," Loki said, smiling to show Tony he must not, by any means, continue to be concerned, "Your friend sang to me a most-terrible song of limes and coconuts, containing now and then a screeching cry of, 'Doctor!' I was greatly unnerved. Is such music—though I hesitate to call it such—common upon Midgard?"

"Not if we're lucky." Bruce seemed to be fighting hard to avoid laughter, and that too was good to see in him, who was often such a somber man. "And, um, yeah, I know that one, Loki. He's inflicted it on me often enough, as well. It's hard to say, though, which is worse- the stupid song itself, or Tony's godawful tone-deaf singing."

"Indeed, Dr. Banner," Loki said, smiling a second time in hopes of encouraging further friendliness. "It is indeed a conundrum that may, perhaps, never be solved."

"It's still just Bruce, though. No need to call me Dr. Banner. What about you, Loki?"

Loki frowned in confusion, not taking his meaning. "As J. will give witness, I have been peaceable, and good, harming none."

"Loki, no," Bruce answered. "I meant, did you want something? Would you like some tea? Have you eaten today?"

"I feel sick," Loki said, which he did, especially as he fought against the residual sorrow of Agent Romanov and Captain Rogers's rejection, as it tried even now to seep into him, and the tension of his encounter with Clint, which left him only slowly.

He realized, though, that Bruce meant to be helpful, and it might be thought rude to reject his kindness.

He gestured toward the carafe. "The good minions of catering brought to me a large amount of tea, but you are considerate indeed to offer... Bruce."

After looking at him thoughtfully for a moment, Bruce walked away, presumably to make Tony's coffee- yet after a short while he returned instead with a small tray, upon which he had placed a glass, a soda-can, a bottle of tablets, and a saucer on which lay six small squares, cream-white in color and blotched with brown.

"They're called saltines," Bruce told him, in a surprisingly kind voice. "They're a variety of very mild cracker. Sometimes it can actually help to put a little something in your stomach when it's upset. I'll pour the ginger ale into the glass, which can help too, because it makes the soda flatter—that is, takes out some of the bubbles."

Beside Loki, Tony seemed to come alive again at the sound of to his friend's calm tone, the sight of his pleasant demeanor. He laid his head briefly upon Loki's shoulder, then raised it again, his tremors nearly gone by this time, only a random shiver, here and there, remaining.

Loki took one of the saltines from the plate, nibbling a corner, encouraged when his gorge didn't instantly rise up to eject the food, as he'd feared it might. He consumed two of the crackers, sipped a little of the soda, even managed to swallow one of the tablets, which in a surprisingly short time sent away much of his pain, though quickly after he began to feel exceedingly sleepy.

Soon he found himself lying—without realizing he'd changed position- with his head upon a cushion in Tony's lap, Tony's fingers carding gently through his curls in a manner that was wonderfully soothing.

Tony, and perhaps Bruce also, had coffee now--Loki could hear clinks and thumps as cups were raised and set down again. The voices of his beloved, of Bruce and J., ebbed and flowed above him, and Loki drowsed. They spoke, idly, of something called a "Quark." Or perhaps of many Quarks. Loki had no idea what a Quark might be, or what the conversation meant, and so he  
pictured the Quarks as small, friendly creatures, rather like the ducks he'd spied swimming on the pond in Central Park, only feathered in diverse and glorious shades of blue. That image, too, was soothing.

In the morning, he would draw a Quark for Tony (he'd become far less shy now about showing his pictures to his dear ones), draw it humorously to make his love laugh, and then ask Tony to explain to him what the being or object or concept truly was, because although Tony believed himself impatient, incapable of teaching anything to anyone, with Loki he was always patient, and  
Loki loved the kindness and the humor in his voice as his love explained to him the mysteries and the rules of his world.

Had there ever been a world as diverse and strange and complex as this one, this Midgard? A world so full of individuals he could readily love?

Loki couldn't imagine ever feeling so about those of Asgard, though he knew he'd loved his mother, and also Sigyn, his once-wife, and their children, and sometimes (always, really, in the secret places of his heart) Thor, his brother.

He felt so _interested_ in all of it, in a way he felt that, in his old life, his life as White Loki, he'd only ever been interested in magic.  He'd learned so much, and yet... what was that funny phrase Tony sometimes used?

 _Googolplexian times infinity_ , that's was what Tony said, meaning not only infinity, but an  
unimaginably _huge_ infinity. An infinity beyond an infinity.

So much.

So much out there.

So much to learn, be, do... Loki couldn't help but find comfort in all that possibility.

 _Are you sleepy or are you pondering?_ Kurt asked softly and warmly inside his head. _I sense a little_ _of each._

 _Most definitely both,_ Loki answered _. Tony, Bruce and J. are speaking of Quarks, which I have_ _imagined as a flock of small ducks, each in a different and resplendent shade of blue. Have I come close_ _to the proper meaning?_

 _Not even the least little bit,_ Kurt answered, laughing (and Loki was glad to hear him laugh, for his  
friend had sounded desperately weary, and also in pain. _It's an elementary particle._

 _Ah, a thing of physics,_ Loki said _, And so perhaps it is a blue duck, only a very, very small one?_

 _I think I'll let Tony explain why that most likely isn't the case,_ lieber _-Loki-who-has-recently-taken-his-pain-medication._

_You can tell?_

_Only a very little,_ Kurt answered, laughing again. _Sleep now, sweet prince. I'll be home soon._ _Perhaps if you've rested enough, we'll_

 _watch a film together,_ ja _?_  
_Ja,_ Loki answered. _That is... yes. I meant to say "yes."_

He didn't break the connection.

After a little while, Kurt said to him, in his kindest and gentlest voice, _I didn't come to you, dearest_ _one, because you didn't need me to come._

 _No,_ Loki replied, _I actually didn't. But it didn't mean...?_

 _That I love you less? That I was too busy? That I have other things to concern me now that don't_ _involve you?_

 _No,_ Loki said. _Not that. I know you love me, my brother, as you ever did. I know you are busy,_ _and that your studies must concern you, because that is the known as 'being responsible,' and also_ _that you will not be able to become an excellent physician, in the manner of Dr. Hank McCoy, if_ _you neglect your work now. And yet..._

 _You have become so strong now, Loki, and so clever, and I wished you to feel that strength within_ _yourself. I would have indeed come, quick as I could, if I'd felt you in trouble—but you weren't in_ _trouble. You did brilliantly._

_Yet... was it you who sent the X-Men?_

Loki felt the shrug in Kurt's mind, and then his great affection for his partner. Ach. _Logan. He_ _worries._

Loki knew what Kurt said was true, as he knew that Logan was a gruff man of ready temper, who had lost Kurt once, and could never bear to do so again. Logan was hard-pressed to bear the least suffering on Kurt's part, and would protect Loki also, if only to keep the one he loved from pain.

 _Speaking of pain..._ Kurt said _. Oof!_

 _Which signifies?_ Loki asked.

 _That neither of us have enjoyed the best of days, sweet prince,_ Kurt answered, his smile in his  
voice. _But that's over and done with, and soon I'll be home_


	11. Foot-in-Mouth Disease

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The things people do when they're nervous. Such as vacuum. Or talk way, way too much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) is a serious, insanely contagious virus that affects animals with split hooves (cows, pigs, sheep, goats, deer, etc.). Foot- _in_ -mouth disease afflicts mainly humans, particularly those named Tony Stark, who _will_ keep talking.
> 
> Dyson Ball Vacuums have several advantages (or so I'm told): like BB-8 in _Star Wars_ , the single large ball they roll on makes them more maneuverable and less prone to tipping than standard 4-wheel models, they've eliminated bags and filters, and they have powerful motors. Sadly, all that engineering costs.
> 
> Salsa verde (green salsa) is made with green tomatillos instead of red tomatoes. Throw in diced avocado for extra yum! 
> 
> A nice dry rub for a ribeye steak might include seasonings like salt, brown sugar, crushed red pepper (or cayenne), smoked paprika, and garlic powder, which are then rubbed into the meat before cooking.
> 
> Chorizo originated in Spain, where pimentos were the main seasoning. Tony means the south-of-the-border version, also known as Mexican Red Sausage, which packs a little more punch owing to the fact that the milder pimentos have been replaced by chiles guajillos (New Mexico red chiles).
> 
> _Tristram Shandy_ (1759), by Henry Fielding, _Gulliver's Travels_ (1726) by Jonathan Swift, and _Tom Jones_ (1749) by Henry Fielding are the three supposedly "humorous" (ha!) novels upon which the young hearts and minds of English Majors are broken. I'm fully convinced that each book is millions of pages long.
> 
> Circadian Rhythms (from Latin- circa="around" (or "approximately"), diēm="day") are the 24-hour cycles of biological processes. They've been shown to exist in such widely different species as plants, animals (ourselves included), fungi, and bacteria. Although largely built-in to the function of an organism, they can also be affected by  
> outside cues such as light and temperature known (as Kurt might tell us) as "zeitgebers" (German for "time givers"), which is why people who work nights usually require things like earplugs and blackout curtains to get any sort of decent sleep.
> 
> "Jinx" is a playground game that happens when two people spontaneously say the same word or phrase at the same time. One person then says, "Jinx!" In the version I grew up with, this would be followed by, "Poke! Poke!" (poke friend as annoyingly as possible) "You owe me a Coke!"
> 
> Muttley the Dog is a Hanna-Barbera cartoon character who first appeared in Wacky Races (1968) as the sidekick to ineffective villain Dick Dastardly. Although Muttley doesn't really talk, as such, he does wheezily snicker (almost always at Dick's expense) and has a distinctive cranky mutter ("Rashin' fashin' Rick Rastardly!").
> 
> In the movie Mary Poppins, Mary reads her tape measure measurement as, "As I  
> expected. 'Mary Poppins, practically perfect in every way.'"
> 
> "X-ray" vision=one of Superman's powers, the ability to see through solid objects. Which makes me wonder--does Batman/Bruce Wayne exist in this world, and do he and Tony show up at high-priced fundraisers and sneer at each other across the table?
> 
> In the movieverse, it seems, Tony is the biological child of Howard and Maria Stark. In the comics he's an adopted "replacement child" for their deceased biological son (that being the reason given for Howard's cold and distant behavior toward his son, not that he's just a narcissistic jerk, or anything). As an adoptive parent myself, I do not approve. Tony's biological comicverse parents have yet to be revealed.
> 
> "StarkDesk" is a play on "Autodesk," a popular 3-D CAD software program used by engineers for working on and submitting their designs.
> 
> "White glove test"=running a white-glove-covered finger over a surface to make sure it's been properly dusted.

* * *

Tony loaded up a tray with coffee and cups, the breakfast burritos he'd assembled that morning with his own two clever hands (because he was a Renaissance Man and not completely useless in the kitchen, thank you very much), bowls of sour cream and homemade salsa verde. J.A.R.V.I.S. already had the windscreens, tinted just enough that he and Kurt wouldn't be blinded by the  
morning sun, slid into  place on the terrace, and the firepit lighted and merrily burning.

The terrace--Tony felt fairly certain--was the only possible place to escape the unrelenting noise of Hurricane Loki. Tony  
had once read somewhere that the sound of a running vacuum cleaner in another room would comfort a fussy baby.  Who knew that actually operating one would have the same effect on a nervous god?

That damn vacuum had been going for _hours_.

"When did he start?" Kurt asked, straight after bamfing in from somewhere—probably somewhere quiet, which meant anywhere _but_ the penthouse on this not-so-fine morning.

Tony had a ready answer to that particular question. "Five-fucking-twenty-two A.M. On a Saturday. A Saturday, Kurt. Lok bounded out of bed, raced into the bathroom and, I'm fairly sure, puked, then started in with the Dyson Ball. The penthouse isn't that big, Kurt. Also, a cleaning crew comes in every single weekday. How much vacuuming can it possibly need?"

"The hoovering isn't the point, I expect," Kurt answered. "Poor Loki. He wants so badly to impress. I sometimes wonder..."

Kurt paused to bite into his burrito. "This is excellent, Tony! Really."

"I cook five things, three of them edible. I grill a mean ribeye steak, complete with dry rub, make a decent waffle—the secret is mixing in crispy bacon before it hits the waffle iron- and kill when it comes to breakfast burritos. My regular burritos are crap, but the breakfast ones are renowned on four continents. Seriously."

Kurt's smile was gentle. "I have no doubt."

"Four continents, _mein Freund_ , I shit you not," Tony repeated, knowing full well his German accent was execrable. "I know this guy who hand-mixes the chorizo, and his mom makes the tortillas. They're my secret weapon." He spooned salsa and sour cream over his burrito and took a big bite.

Heaven. Pure heaven.

Kurt picked out a couple of jalapenos before taking another bite. "Do you think we could tempt Loki to join us? He ought to eat something, though I'd no idea he was still feeling under the weather." He was doing his worried look, the thing where the soft fur between his eyebrows creased into two little wrinkles, which never failed to look cute and somewhat petable.

Tony, however, refrained.

"I honestly don't think he is, as such. Still sick, I mean. He says his head doesn't hurt, and the bruises have all faded. Haven't you ever just felt so nervous, you...?"

He gave Kurt a closer look, realizing that the young German just looked mystified.

"God, Kurt, you never have, have you? No performance anxiety. No, 'Dammit, I'm going to die.' No 'I'm so freaked out about this I'm gonna vomit.' I'm fairly certain I threw up before every singlefucking exam I took at MIT."

"That may have been the scotch, Tony," his friend pointed out, but not in a mean way.

"Fair enough," Tony answered, because Kurt was probably right about that one, as he was about most things. "But you—I'm starting to think Loki was right. You, my good sir, have aplomb."

"Aplomb?" Kurt laughed. "Aplomb?  Really?"

"I think he read the word in one of his books. Buy that boy a pair of glasses and he starts in zooming through the Victorian Classics like they were going out of style. Weren't already out of style. Whatever."

"Loki started with Chaucer," Kurt informed him. "I believe he's reached the early twentieth century at this point. He read _Tristram Shandy_ by choice, Tony. I'm not sure even Laurence Sterne read _Tristram Shandy_ by choice."

"The author of the novel," he added, answering Tony's look.

"Loki has also read all of _Gulliver's Travels_ , not just the part about Lilliput. And _Tom Jones_. I have it on good authority that actual humans majoring in English Literature have been known to end their own lives at the thought of having to slog through those three books."

J.A.R.V.I.S. snickered.

"Loki keeps a different sleep-schedule than we do," Kurt went on. He has different Circadian rhythms--or is without Circadian rhythms as we know them. Hank theorizes he's attuned to the cycles of either Asgard or _Jotunnheimr_ —possibly both. I believe he and J.A.R.V.I.S. hold late-night literary discussions."

"Indeed," J. put in primly. "I quite enjoy having a _reader_ in the family."

"I read!" Kurt and Tony protested simultaneously.

"Jinx!" Tony laughed. "Okay, let me clarify. Kurt reads. I skim engineering journals in a supercilious way in order to bolster my ego and binge-watch Netflix, where some of the shows are--just _possibly_ \--based on books."

"Admirably honest," J.A.R.V.I.S. granted.

"Admittedly, the majority of my reading time has been spent finding novels that would be meaningful and enjoyable to young mutants," Kurt said. "Though I do have something of a bucket list of books I want to read for myself."

"So. Goddamn. Perfect," Tony muttered, only it was a fake mutter. Kind of a Muttley the Dog mutter, meant to make his friend laugh (even if Kurt, much like a de-primmed Mary Poppins,really did sometimes appear to be " _practically perfect in every way_ ").

He wondered if Kurt even knew about Muttley and Dick Dastardly, and their never-ending hopeless schemes, or if Kurt was  
both too young and too European.

"I do get nervous, now and then," Kurt said, circling back around to their (almost) original topic. "I felt undeniably nervous my first day of teaching. I wore a tie. And a tweed jacket."

"Are there pictures?" Tony asked, and Kurt laughed again.

"Certainly, if I know Logan." He smiled fondly. Only Kurt.

At that point, Loki ended his recent love affair with the Dyson Ball and straggled out onto the terrace, looking droopy and a little wild-eyed.

"Tony, I can still see..." he began, his hands moving in a vague-but-expansive gesture that Tony interpreted as most likely meaning, " _filth!  horrible filth everywhere!_ "

"Babe." Tony held up a hand. "Switch out of x-ray vision. It's clean. Furthermore, your Mr. Tobit isn't going to give our place the white-glove test. If he was super germaphobic, he'd hardly be teaching in a decommissioned train station in Brooklyn.

"Oh. Indeed." Loki sank into one of the unoccupied chairs, looking defeated. "I am foolish."

_Zero to self-esteem issues in .5 seconds_ , Tony thought. Loki definitely had his good days and his not-so-good days.

"You know what, babe?" he told Loki, "You should show Mr. T the picture you drew me of the Quarks. I bet it would give him a good laugh. And you know what else? I texted your drawing to a professor friend of mine, a lady who teaches Physics at Columbia, and she asked me to ask you for permission to use it with her students."

Loki blushed a fetching shade of mauve, glaring down at his own bare (and equally fetching) toes.

Tony thought he detected a barely-audible mutter of, "Foolishness."

"Hey, Kurt," Tony pressed on. "Did you know Loki has been promoted? No longer an intern, now a genuine employee of Stark Industries, part-time while he's going to school, then who knows? His shit was way too good to keep him tied to the photocopier."

"And now I am accused of nepotism," Loki muttered, "And of walking upon the backs of those more greatly deserving, who have longer served the company, and of having stolen food from the mouths of their innocent children."

Loki rose to his feet, stalking elegantly, angrily, and at the same time, sadly, back inside.

The proclamation, "In which I will have no part!" drifted back to Kurt and Tony seconds before the door slid shut.

Tony shot Kurt a look, both brows raised.

Kurt shook his head in return. "I haven't heard a word about this. It may be..." He looked thoughtful.

"Can you maybe cajole him into doing some yoga or something?  Chill him out a little?"

"Tony, I know you mean well..." Kurt shook his head again, something clearly on his mind, at the same time his sassy tail appeared to be calling Tony an idiot.

Tony knew. He did. It was no secret to him whatsoever that Loki had a constant negative soundtrack playing just beyond his threshold of awareness, in some part of his mind to which he no longer possessed conscious access. That he'd probably been punished for his achievements at the same time Thor was rewarded for his, because none of Loki's achievements would ever be seen as desirable, or right, only as _ergi_ , and untrustworthy, and also most likely threatening as well to his control-freak of a dad.

_Too much praise confuses and frightens Loki_ , that's what Kurt (and his tail) wanted to say. He's waiting for the hammer, or the fist, or the gods knew what else, to fall, without even knowing he's waiting.

Actually, though, those weren't things Kurt needed to explain, because Tony already understood _exactly_ how that worked, considering that his own soundtrack, and his own shame, weren't all that different from his boyfriend's.

Tony wondered if, at times, despite having pretty much the most awful parents in the whole history of parentage, Kurt, weirdly, hadn't had things a little easier, when all was said and done. If your mom and dad were genuinely awful individuals, and everyone not only knew but acknowledged that as fact, without holding it against you personally, and you knew yourself to be a  
good person, that had to be pretty straightforward, didn't it?

You wouldn't necessarily be happy about your lot in life, not like you would if you'd had a decent and loving start in life, but at least it would be a lot less emotionally confusing than, say, if your father was a genius, a hero, a man of action, rich and powerful and envied, but he thought you, the fruit of his loins, was a grade-A piece of shit.

Also not so clear-cut would be having a dear old dad every fucking person in your country called "Allfather" (with a capital A), literally king not only of all he surveyed, but an ageless and omnipotent god who stole you from the land of your birth for reasons unknown (though most likely " _for political gain_ " or " _to fuck with his enemy"_ would be numbered high on the list), lied to you your whole life about not only who but _what_ you were, and constantly rubbed your brother's "worthiness" in your face.

"I should perhaps go..." Kurt put in.

"Probably not a bad idea," Tony said.

Kurt bamfed. Tony watched the resulting smoke waft upward into the silvery blue-gray of the morning sky before pulling out his phone. He tossed it gently a time or two in his hand, considering.

"J.," he finally said, "Before I dial, any input?"

"Jealousy and sour grapes," the A.I. sniffed, and Tony believed him, because even though J.A.R.V.I.S. was very much a charter member of Team Loki, he also tended to be honest in his assessments—often whether or not honesty was exactly what you wanted at the moment.

"Do tell?"

"Ms. Carnehan of the Design Department, having previously failed to obtain an inspiring proposal from her staff for that item I've heard you refer to as the 'Cadillac StarkPad'--by which I assume you meant a model of superior style and appearance, if not value..."

"Hey, the value's there," Tony protested. "And the function. It's nothing without the function."

"Very well," J.A.R.V.I.S. answered, clearly humoring him. "As I had begun to relate, Ms. Carnehan proposed a competition amongst her staff, to be "blind-judged," I believe the term is, without names or other identifying information attached, upon the criteria of harmony of appearance and the degree to which design abetted the ease of use for potential consumers."

"Hey, I remember that!" Tony exclaimed suddenly. "There were, like, what, eight designs, and they were supposed to look good and be user-friendly? Pep and I actually had kind of a laugh, because three were totally snooze-worthy, two looked just like the kind of ho-hum shit Apple makes, two others might as well have been submitted in purple crayon on newsprint instead of on  
StarkDesk—and then there was this one... Pep said it outdid Art Deco, brought it into the now, or something. I said it had kind of cool retro-futuristic thingy going on. Anyway, it was the sex, J."

"Indeed," J.A.R.V.I.S. told him dryly. "Disapprovingly" went without saying. "Indeed, the other department heads concurred, although with... ahem... slightly different vocabulary."

"Only, let me guess--that good design was Loki's, and by winning he totally lost. Because no one was ever gonna believe, not in a million years, and no matter how good he was, or is, that the judging wasn't rigged, and he didn't have an in, so he looked like a cheater, or Tony Stark's spoiled mutant cousin, and even if he gave the prize away, whatever it was..."

"Gift cards of some denomination," J. answered. "A generous denomination, I'm given to believe."

"So even if he declines the prize, or gives the fucking cards away to the untalented fucks, or uses every single one to buy prezzies for the losers, aka his co-workers, he still looks like Tony Stark's spoiled cousin, lording his wealth and position over them all. Shit. Poor Loki. He's so gifted, and so good, but he sure can't win for losing. How come I'm just now hearing about this?"

"I was exhorted not to tell you, sir. Loki does have his pride. He hoped to be able to set the matter right without your... ah..."

"So if I make a couple calls...?"

_Interference,_ Tony thought. _That's the word J. wouldn't say.  Interference,  Meddling.  Sticking my nosy nose in where it isn't wanted._

"Inadvisable, sir," J.A.R.V.I.S. answered, pretty much confirming Tony's suspicions.

"Do I pull him out of the department, let him go elsewhere, another company? I wouldn't, if it was someone else. You know me, J. I like to hold on to my talent. I'm selfish that way." Tony gnawed on his thumbnail, not even realizing he was doing it until the damn thing started to hurt—and, shit, when had he started _that_ nice little habit up again?

"Where is Loki, anyway?"

"Returning from the gymnasium, I believe. Kurt has begun teaching him to fence. Loki seems to find the exercise somewhat relieving of his feelings."

"Okay, so that's good." Tony sighed, letting the sliding doors whoosh open in front of him.  He slumped into the now-silent penthouse. "Maybe we should just fucking get married or something."

"There is the small matter of the Board of Directors, sir," J. chided. "Also, if I might..."

"Well, to hell with them. Hear me through, J. Maybe we should. Get hitched, I mean. Then poor Lok could do whatever the hell he pleased, and we wouldn't have this rigmarole about bennies, or pay, or green cards, he could just be Mr. Stark for real, and..."

Tony took his slumpage into the kitchen, feeling the need for a second pot of coffee, because he just wasn't stressed and  
irritable enough.

Unexpectedly, he ran smack into his boyfriend, who stood frozen in front of a blender half-filled with smoothie fixings.  A massive handful of blueberries occupied one of Loki's hands, their purple juice dripping unheeded between his long blue fingers.

The look on Loki's face could only be described as "stricken."

This lasted about two seconds, and then he teleported.

It wasn't a dramatic 'port, full of fire and strange smells, like Kurt's.  Instead, the air gave a slight ripple, followed by a sound like the sharp blade of a skate slicing over deeply-frozen ice.

The blueberries flew upward and stuck to the ceiling, making dark splotches on the white paint.

"May I announce the arrival of Mr. Harold Tobit?" J.A.R.V.I.S. announced helpfully.

About a pint of blueberries, Tony noticed, still clung wetly above them, probably awaiting the moment of utmost inconvenience to fall.

"Perfect," Tony commented, retrieving a couple of squashy, semi-thawed berries from his hair, and dropping them down the Disposall. He knew exactly how he'd sounded to his sensitive, warm-hearted boyfriend—namely, like a complete dickwad. "Absolutely, brilliantly, fucking perfect."

Kurt--who knew Tony didn't really take _anything_ with Loki for granted, that he would have done anything in the world to avoid hurting him--threw him a sympathetic look.

Kurt's tail, as usual, appeared to have a differing opinion.


	12. Lessons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki is upset. Thor makes threats. Tony arrives at some conclusions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> William Adams, aka will.i.am, is an American actor, musician and record producer perhaps best known for his association with The Black-eyed Peas.
> 
> _Die Jahrmarkt_ (the canon name of Kurt's circus) means "funfair."
> 
> "The elephant in the room" is the totally obvious thing no one talks about because talking about it would be horribly uncomfortable.
> 
> Paula Deen is a television personality/chef known for using huge amounts of butter in her cooking (and, unfortunately, for her casual off-camera use of racist language). She always puts a sprig of fresh mint on her desserts, whether called for or not.

* * *

The ceiling continued its gentle, splodgy hail of blueberries as the elevator door slid open, revealing two elderly(ish)… hobbits?

_Yup_ , Tony thought.  _Definitely hobbits._

There weren't that many people (of legal age, anyway) who Tony got to literally look down upon.  In the case of Harold Tobit and (presumably) his sister, he could have stared right down into the roots of their dandelion-fluff hair, they were that little. Only he didn't. Because manners. Which he did have some of, actually.  He did.

Besides that, he liked their faces, which were heavily lined, but not in that creepy Emperor Palpatine even-my-own-skin-doesn't-like-my-face way some people moved into in their twilight years.  Instead, theirs were the kind of lines people end up with after years of living generally happy and decent lives. Both brother and sister looked as if they smiled and laughed frequently, and good humor and wisdom filled their identical bright blue eyes.

What had Mrs. Cook always said? _"We earn the faces we end up with_."

The Tobits, Tony suspected, had more than earned their good faces. Hell, just the fact that they'd come here, spending their Saturday making Loki happy, when they totally didn't need to, gave them major points in Tony's book.

"Shall I?" Kurt, helpful as always, gestured toward the slowly-plopping berries.  He even pulled a stool out from the kitchen island, when he totally could have leaped up, clung upside down from the ceiling, and made a quick job of his cleanup duties.

_Perhaps slightly distracting for those not of the family, ja?_   asked Kurt's voice (in a totally non-judgmental way, because this _was_ Kurt, after all) inside Tony's head.

"Uh.  Yeah."  Tony cleared his throat.  "Um.  Hi." At least he'd managed to get that out before the silence moved from awkward to _incredibly_ awkward. "Tony Stark. I am."

As introductions (and names) went, it both made less sense than, say, will.i.am, _and_ made him sound like a doofus, but he'd have to live with that.

"I'm sorry," he went on, attempting to get his shit at least a little more neatly assembled. "We had a kitchen incident. Smoothie-related. Let it be a lesson— _never_ startle Loki when he has a handful of berries. It appears those mitts of his can hold a truly epic number at one time."

"So belatedly..." Tony stuck out his own hand. "Let me back up and try this again. I'm Tony StarK. Thanks so much for coming. Loki's been crazy excited about your visit all week, and I think he willed himself healthy just for the occasion."

The hobbits, brother, then sister, shook with him. Both had warm, callused hands, with surprisingly firm grips, especially  considering their childlike size. They introduced themselves, respectively, as, "Harold Tobit" and "Eugenia Tobit."

Eugenia. There was a name you didn't hear every day.

Continuing in his awkward attempt to play Good Host, Tony ushered them to the couch. "Loki should be up in a minute. Can I get you anything? Coffee? Tea? Juice? A smoothie made with berries that didn't just drop off the ceiling?"

The Tobits, bless them, smiled despite the weakness of his joke. Both accepted coffee. Best of all--which made them shoot up even further in Tony's estimation--they barely even blinked when Kurt brought in the tray, just smiled again politely and said appreciative things.

Afterwards, beverages served, Eugenia did stare a little, but not rudely, more as if she was trying to recall something from the past.

Since Kurt didn't venture to introduce himself, Tony did the honors. "This is Kurt Wagner. He's kind of Lok's honorary big brother, and my honorary little brother, living with us while he does med school. He makes sure I don't act like too much of an idiot and that Loki eats his veggies."

"I'm extremely pleased to meet you," Kurt told them, with one of his trademark charming fangy grins.

"You're originally from... Bavaria?" Eugenia asked. "Forgive my asking. I worked as a translator for some years, all round and about Europe, then taught German language and literature here in Manhattan. You have a unique accent."

" _Ja_ , I was born in Bavaria, but I traveled a great deal as a child." Kurt poured the coffee (he'd broken out the good cups, the shiny red matching ones, instead of the usual mismatched mugs with geeky references) with a butler-like flair, serving their guests first because he had good manners, then Tony, then himself. "I've lived in this country now— _Ach!_ \--for more than ten years now, which scarcely seems possible."

"Forgive my impertinence, Mr. Wagner," Eugenia said, with a brief sideways glance at her brother. "Please feel free to laugh, and know that I mean no offense.  When my grandchildren were young, Harold and I I took them to the most wonderful circus, in Prague. Just a small, traveling circus, with only one ring, but it had..."

"Oh, yes, yes, I remember!" Harold broke in. "The little German circus, and that wonderful lad--so like you, Mr. Wagner, though we believed, at the time, he wore a costume--who walked the wire with incredible skill, and flew on the trapeze... Oh, it was magical, wasn't it, Genie?"

Freed from his pouring duties, Kurt performed one of his sudden and unexpected quadruple flips into the air, landing with a courtly bow, one hand pressed to his chest.

Eugenia clapped her hands excitedly, her face full of light, like the little girl she must once have been, long before. "Oh, yes! Oh, yes! We'd truly thought it was a costume, but this is so much better, isn't it, Harry? That the magic wasn't an illusion, that it was all real?

"But..." A shadow fell over her softly-wrinkled hobbit face.  "You must have been such a young boy then—it's gone better than twenty years now. Such an act can't have been safe for a child. I hope... Oh, I do hope..."

" _Die Jahrmarkt_ was a magical place to grow up," Kurt answered, dropping down onto the couch beside Eugenia and taking her hand. "It was, for me, a most marvelous family. I believe I walked the wire as soon as I _could_ walk, and flew the moment it was allowed me. There was nothing I loved better."

Eugenia smiled, the enjoyment of her memory restored. Soon she and the German were happily rattling away to each other in Kurt's native tongue, clearly well on their way to pledging eternal friendship.

"And here's Loki!" Harold said, with obvious pleasure, as the elevator doors whooshed open.

There was Loki indeed.  A Loki looking slightly grim, or maybe unhappy, eyes large and the corners of his mouth turned down.  Beside him stood Thor, looking hearty and... well... big. Also brotherly. Big brotherly, which Tony wasn't quite sure boded well for him.

"You see," the god of thunder announced, "Here is my dearest brother, full-equipped with his tools and in joyful anticipation of his lesson!"

If anything (though Tony did appreciate his efforts), Thor's attempts at actually conversing in English came out even weirder, sometimes, than when they'd all only _thought_ he was speaking English, but was really communicating in the universal language of the _Aesir_ , apparently (and not very inventively) called "The Allspeak."

"Esteemed Mr. Tobit, please forgive me that I am tardy to our meeting." Loki said. He sounded unhappy too, and Tony knew then for sure that he'd screwed up bigtime, shot off his big mouth, trampled on some social taboo that Loki probably only half-remembered (at most), but still believed in enough to have been terribly offended.

Loki descended from elevator to conversation pit in that slightly lofty, slightly drifty way he'd sometimes slip into when he felt unhappy, uncomfortable and physically, maybe, not his best, a combination that tended to afflict Loki more than anyone Tony knew.  He resembled an extremely proper blue ghost.

"My most-honored teacher, Harold Tobit, may I have the honor to present to you my brother, Thor Odinson. From Iceland."

Mr. Tobit bounced up, submitting his hand to total engulfage by Thor's massive paw. The levitating ends of his flyaway white hair came up about to Thor's belly button.

Did the _Aesir_  actually have belly buttons? Tony wondered.  He assumed they did. Loki had one, anyway. A very cute one, in fact.

"Yes, I am from Iceland," Thor asserted solemnly, probably the most obvious lie in the entire history of unconvincing lies.

He put one huge arm around Loki's shoulders and pulled him close, to Loki's clear physical discomfort—so he was still sore after all, of course he was, even if he wouldn't admit it. "I am Loki's brother."

"I see the family resemblance," Mr. Tobit said drily, which honestly made Tony like the guy even more. He admired a man who brought the snark, even if the snark was slightly mummified and British.

"Loki is adopted," Thor replied, never one to miss the opportunity to let a joke go whizzing straight over his head.

He redeemed himself seconds later, though, by following up that statement with, "And yet, he is as dear to me as if every drop of blood in our two veins flowed from a single source."

Okay, that was confusing both anatomically and as a figure of speech, but it was still sweet, and it made Loki give his brother a look of boundless gratitude, gazing up at him fondly as Thor settled both hands heavily on his shoulders.

"Do well, Loki, and learn greatly from your honored teacher. Now and always, I am proud of you." He gave Loki's forehead a hearty kiss. "And now, Lady Jane requires my services in the cause of carrying much weighty equipment, yet I shall return at lunchtime as requested, to hear what you have learned and to admire your efforts."

He ambled back into the elevator, cheerfully swinging Mjolnir from its loop on his wrist. If the Tobits thought this was a little... um... weird, they said nothing.

"Thor's a woodworker," Tony put in. "He does, uh, like his tools."

Eugenia tittered in a ladylike, yet strangely smutty way. Moments later, she and Kurt departed to go look at the art in the corporate office. Which left Loki, Harold, Tony, and the elephant in the room.

"Do you still want a smoothie, Lok?" Tony asked. "I'll make one for you, if you do. Since you missed breakfast."

"You are kind," Loki answered, not stiffly, but in a bruised-sounding kind of way, which made Tony feel infinitely worse than if his boyfriend had been blatantly mad at him. "I fear I flung the last of the blueberries into the air when you startled me, yet strawberries remain in the freezer, and also raspberries. Do not, by any means, add a banana. Yogurt and the vanilla protein powder are acceptable."

Tony made his escape to the kitchen, assembled the requested ingredients, then realized he hadn't the slightest clue what to do with them. He texted Kurt.

Kurt called back. "Tony, _lieber Freund_ ," he said, in the kindest possible tone of voice, "Will you never learn to _halt die Klappe_?"

Sadly, it was a rhetorical question. They both knew, in all likelihood, he'd _never_ manage--as Logan might have alternatively phrased it, to "shut his yap."

"I'll fix this. I will," Tony assured his friend. "Only, right now, how do I make a smoothie acceptable to his highness?"

"Don't call him that, _bitte,_ " Kurt came back at him, actually hitting Tony (maybe for the first time in his entire saintly life) with maybe just a shade of... well... shade.

A trifle curtly (how else), he gave Tony the recipe.

Tony strongly considered banging his own head against the wall while the blender was running, as a way of relieving his feelings.

As an alternative, he dialed Thor.

Instead of "hello," the god of thunder answered with the unique greeting of, "Dear friend and teammate, are you perhaps involved in the grinding of something?" He sounded interested. Maybe grinding stuff was, like, a hobby in Asgard. Maybe they had grinding competitions.

"Just making your brother a smoothie. It's the blender. Hey, Point Break, is marriage, like a really, really big deal back home? Like, a sacred, untouchable, don't-even-joke-about-it institution?"

"Is it not, here in Midgard?" Thor answered, apparently without irony.

Alarmingly (and Tony had rarely found Thor alarming before that particular moment), his voice dropped even lower than usual, into the rumbly, avalanche-imminent kind of range. "Shield-Brother, must I remind you, whatever my father has done, Loki is now and always a Prince of Asgard?"

Tony heard distinct capital letters in Prince Worthy's voice.

"Neither should you sport with Loki's affections, nor treat him as... as a floozy. As a temporary partner you may use, or join with in sham, as in the Sin City of Vegas, beneath the unworthy eyes of one of the imposter Elvi."

_Imposter Elvi?_ Tony mouthed.

Oh, Jesus, _Elvis impersonators_ , that's what Thor meant! What in hell had he been watching?

"It may be," Thor rumbled on, "That I must remind you, even without consideration of his recent... illness, Loki is still in youth, only in his Second Manhood, his emotions tender, his thoughts impressionable." The deep, authoritative voice faltered.

For the first time, Tony wondered, _How old is Thor himself? The_ god of thunder looked youngish but reasonably mature, but in his people's terms, how old was he really? Tony had the sudden, uncomfortable feeling that he might actually be talking, at that very moment, to what amounted to a twenty-one-year-old kid who was trying to parent his nineteen-year-old brother, and the thought made him feel kind of squirmy. He knew Loki wasn't actually underage or anything, but he also knew, whatever appearances or the scope of history said, his boyfriend was still pretty young.

"I wish that you had known her, my friend," Thor went on, in as gentle a tone as Tony had ever heard from him. "I wish that you had known Sigyn, the wife of my brother's First Manhood, for she was the most pure, the most kind, the most courageous of all ladies who ever lived, not excepting even my sweet Lady Jane, and unless it lives within you to act as she acted, to sit patiently beneath the earth, hands ever-scalded by venom, for two turnings of the centuries, only to spare my Loki brief instants of pain, rewarded, in all her suffering, only by feelings of most resolute affection, then aloud in the marketplace shall I name you a trifler and a man of no honor, and cut out then your beating heart, and next crush the head upon your body with my own hands so that no man may ever, from that day until your burning, again recognize your features."

_Tell me how you really feel, Thor,_ Tony thought, but he somehow knew he should have known. Somehow.

"Take my assurance, Thor," Tony answered, glad his voice actually decided to do him the favor of sounding humble and contrite for the occasion, because usually it just made him sound like a smartass, even when he didn't mean to. "No imposter Elvi. No sham. No more even talking like an idiot, because I love your brother, I genuinely do, even though I'd kind of thought I wasn't equipped to love anybody. I honestly can't tell you how I'd do beneath the earth, ever-scalded or not, because I've never been in that situation, and I know it's really, really soon in our relationship, but there's no trifling, I guarantee. No using. Nothing like that."

"You possess a reputation," Thor told him gravely.

"I know," Tony said, switching off the blender. If that damn smoothie wasn't blended by this time, it never would be.

He poured the pink mess into a tall glass. He'd have put a sprig of mint on the top, like Paula-fucking-Deen if he thought it would get Loki to forgive him.

"I know, Thor, and I'm sorry to say that reputation's mostly deserved. But it's also in the past. You know how that is?"

"Indeed," Thor answered. "For now and then, before the meeting of my Lady Jane, I knew dalliance with women for whom I possessed attraction but not affection, though I understood such behavior to be low and unworthy. Understand, please, Shield-Brother, that I do not speak so harshly because I aim either to judge or offend, but because I would have you know, whatever our father has done, that Loki is not as one without family or friends. He will be defended, and any harm done him will be avenged."

"Point taken," Tony answered quietly, wondering if it was possible to be more uncomfortable with a conversation than this particular conversation with Thor had made him. "Look, buddy, I'll see you at lunch, and later on we can talk about this. Just know, I didn't mean to make light of a serious subject, I certainly didn't mean to offend or disrespect your brother, and if you could just hold off on Mjolnerating my head until after we do talk, I'd greatly appreciate the favor."

"Most certainly, Shield-Brother," Thor agreed.

"Thanks, Thor. Much appreciated."

And it was. It actually was—because it was sweet to see Thor, in his stiff and oddly-worded way, standing up so determinedly for his brother. It was good they had each other, and that Loki, hurt and confused, knew he could seek out his big bro.

 

While he'd been chatting, and blendering, Loki and Mr. T. had put down plastic on the dining table. Loki had brushes, a big jar of water, and fat tubes of what Tony thought were acrylic paints spread out in front of him. He appeared to be mixing colors on a palette, a rich blue the exact same shade of Kurt's fur, as Harold pointed out something on a color wheel.

He looked happy, his eyes bright with interest and excitement. He was beautiful, so beautiful, in a way that—for want of a more romantic image—wrung out Tony's heart like a soggy washcloth. There was nothing, _nothing_ Tony wouldn't do for him.

He thought of hitting his workshop, of calling Bruce to come join him in the lab, or holing up in his study on the second floor, but he bagged all those ideas, retreating instead to the bedroom, formerly his, now theirs, stretching out on the new-and-almost-equally-comfortable-as-the-old-one bed. Everything took some amount of getting used to.

Tony sprawled, flat on his back, for a long time just staring up at the ceiling, paying not the least attention to his busy little thoughts, always there, always wanting to distract him.

"J.A.R.V.I.S.," he said, after a certain time had passed.

"'Imposter Elvi,'" the A.I. answered.

Tony laughed. "My future brother-in-law does have a turn of phrase."

"It's too soon," J. replied gently.

"Don't you think I know that? I know that." Tony stared some more at the white ceiling. He should put something up there, like a movie screen, or a sky that showed the weather, like in the Great Hall at Hogwarts.

J. didn't answer.

"There's nothing wrong with a long engagement. As long as Loki wants or needs. Personally, I'd run off to a justice of the peace and marry him at lunchtime. I'm smitten, J. Smitten."

"Smitten sounds..." J.'s voice had _tones.  All_ kinds of tones,  Christ, but he sounded human.

"Flimsy? Temporary? Give me a better word then."

"Oh, sir." This time J.A.R.V.I.S. sounded unusually... was tender the word Tony was looking for?

"So, okay, two things, J.," Tony said, after some further minutes had passed in silence. "First, the Board of Directors. Find me a way around the "able to produce suitable heirs" clause they have hanging over my head? A good way. Ironclad. Second, hunt me out a few really excellent and Lokiworthy engagement rings? I know I haven't admitted the fact before this, but you have way better taste than I do."

"As you wish," J.A.R.V.I.S. answered.


	13. Perfectly Loki

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki makes a proposal... and a confession.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the Marvel Universe, The Red Room is the Soviet facility created to train highly skilled and specialized spies, such as the sublime Natasha Romanov.
> 
> Another name for Norovirus is "The Winter Vomiting Bug." I think that pretty much says it all, except that the virus only requires a day or to to incubate and tends to sweep through families and groups of co-workers taking down all in its path. Cleaning with bleach, hydrogen peroxide or Lysol can help kill it.
> 
> There are three wavelengths of ultraviolet light: A, B, and C. "C" is the one that kills germs.
> 
> Post-Easter trivia: "Jesus wept." (John 11:35 KJV) is the shortest verse in _The Bible_.
> 
> The poem, again, is _"The Cloths of Heaven_ ," by William Butler Yeats.
> 
> A sommelier is a wine steward. As I'm allergic to Champagne, I can't comment on the quality of the Charles Heidsieck 1995 _Blanc des Millenaires_ though it's highly rated wine.
> 
> Golden Star White Jasmine Sparkling Tea, non-alcoholic, festive and yummy, looks just like Champagne in a glass.

* * *

After a while, Tony called Pepper at home. She sounded rough.

"Late night?" he asked, in his best fake-sympathetic voice.

Pepper made a noise that managed, while still remaining ladylike, to sound both indicative of disgust and of profound hatred for him as a person.

"How are you unaware that half your staff has been off work with stomach flu?"

"Norovirus," Tony corrected helpfully.

Pepper's next sound was slightly less ladylike.

"I'm sorry you don't feel well," he told her, this time in a more genuine way.  "Is there...?"

"I'm better. Last night I was hoping death was imminent."

"Seriously, Pep. Can I get you anything?"

"No," Pep answered shortly, then added, in a friendlier tone. "Actually, Natasha, bless her heart, did a water, saltine and ginger ale run for me. Unlike you, she is immune to disgust and, apparently, viruses of any sort. She called it 'the single upside of the Red Room.' I have no idea what that means."

"Most likely, you don't want to."

Poor Nat. A woman--or a man--Tony knew, could be tough and clever and and a kickass BAMF superspy and still want things. Ordinary things. Family things. Look at Clint. Hell, even he wanted a family down the line, and maybe, given recent changes, he wouldn't even have to worry about messing that up completely.

"I really am sorry you're sick, Pep. I'll have J.A.R.V.I.S. call in extra cleaning crews for this weekend to scrub the whole building down top to bottom with bleach or something. Maybe we can even borrow back those special ultraviolet-C death-ray things from Phil."

"Phil and Clint are down with it too. Don't bother them."

"Oh, Pep, like I haven't hacked every single one of Phil's super secret director-codes? It's like you don't even know me! The dude used his dog's name and Steve's birthdate, for god's sake, and he's somehow the Director of a cadre of hush-hush superspies? Jesus wept. I'll order my own death-rays and save him the trouble, because I'm just that considerate."

"What a guy," Pepper answered, in a dry sort of way.

"Take care. Let me know if you need anything. Seriously. I'm asking Loki to marry me. Talk to you soon."

Tony knew Pepper really was sick because it took her three whole seconds to call back.

"Tony. What the hell?"

"I know it's soon. I plan a long engagement."

"But the Board, Tony..."

"As if I care," he answered, and was surprised by the intensity in his own voice. "As if I wouldn't fucking walk away—no offense, or judgment, or anything else against you, Pep, of course, because you are truly the best of the best—but I'd start up my own rival company from nothing. I'd would sit on a street corner with a cardboard sign, begging for spare change, if it meant being true to him. And, I mean that, oldest, dearest friend. I mean that completely."

"Wow." A pause followed. "You said something stupid to him, didn't you?"

"I did," Tony agreed. "It may come as a shock to you, but I said something flippant—not to Loki personally, but in his hearing, and the aftermath..."

"Is he leaving you?" Pepper asked softly.

"No," Tony answered, "But even that isn't the point. The point is, the thought of losing him, even of hurting him, of him not being there for me, and me for him, like for forever, is just... No. Just no, Pep. Just no."

"Tony," Pepper said, in an equally gentle tone. "You've known each other for about fifteen minutes. You're recently sober. Loki is only at the beginning of recovering from a traumatic brain injury. He's also—and I'm not sure you realize this, completely—but it bears repeating, in any case, that for a being over a thousand years old, Loki really is very young. _Very_ young."

"He's been married before. He's had kids, Pep. He's a widower. It's not like I'm taking him out of high school."

"Very _young_ ," she repeated, in stern tones.

"I know," Tony said. "So, we'll grow up together. And if Loki outgrows me, well, then, it's his choice to stay or go. If he doesn't want to be with me at some future time, even a near future time, that's for him to decide, and I'd let him go. I would. Did I mention the long engagement?"

Another pause, longer this time, then Pepper said, so sweetly Tony thought she just might have broken his heart a little bit, "That's my Tony."

"Get some rest, okay?" he answered when he could. "Feel better, darling Pepper."

"I will," she told him. "I will."

They disconnected. When Tony looked up, Loki was standing in the doorway, lounging against the doorjamb a little as if he'd been waiting a while for Tony to finish his call.

"I wasn't upset, so much, because of the words," Loki told him. "I became upset because I thought it was all a jest."

"What was a jest, babe?" Tony asked.

"My hopes. That I might, at some time, join to you, as I joined to Sigyn, in that time I do not remember. Because I am a male, and you are a male, and it was wrong, always, to be _ergi_ , and wrong, always, to love as I love, which was why, Thor tells me, I was given to Sigyn in the first place, that I might either behave with honor toward her, and therefore be as was required by my station, or behave with dishonor, and be rightly slain by her _Vanir_ brothers and uncles. Is that correct, ' _in the first place_?'"

Tony nodded.

"My brother explained to me, as Lady Jane explained to him, that although some are _ergi_ , as I am _ergi_ , and some love as I love..." Loki almost flitted to the edge of the bed, it was that fast, like the movement of some untamed creature. He sat down on the bed with his back very stiff and his face turned to the blank wall instead of to Tony.

After a second or two, his hand stretched out, landing lightly on Tony's knee. Tony took it, and held it, wishing he could convey every single thing he felt and thought with that touch, also amused by the amount of paint Loki had managed to get on his fingers.

And yet it was still better art than Jackson Pollock.

"Thor told me, as Lady Jane taught him, that it is not wrong, it only _is_. As the wind is, or the stones, or the warmth of the sun. It is."

"Yeah," Tony answered. "That sounds about right."

"Not wrong, Tony. I am not wrong. I am not bad. I am not misbegotten."

"None of those things, Lok. Not one of those things."

"And it is acceptable, by the law of this land, because the law is intended to do right, to protect the few along with the many. Some may still hate, because some always hate. Some may disapprove, just as some disapprove of vaccinations, or cupcakes, or of keeping a very, very good little dog as a friend and companion in one's home. Disapproval does not make the one who disapproves correct, only possessing of an opinion. What is that saying you, have, beloved, regarding opinions and anuses?"

"Everyone has one." Tony laughed (though he kind of wanted to cry a little at the same time, that with all the things Loki had lost, those words he'd repeated--words he'd probably heard over and over--those cruel, demeaning words still stuck in his head).

"Do you want a puppy, Loki?" he asked, mostly to stave off those feelings of sorrow. And rage.

"I do, but that is a matter for another moment. The matter for this moment is, that the law of your homeland actually, in full truth, says we may join. Your words were not a cruel lie, or a jest, which I ought to have known, because though you often sport, beloved, never have I known you to sport with me to cause injury. I ought to have trusted that in you, yet I was caught off guard, and did not, and for that I owe you deepest apologies. I ought to have remembered that you often speak most lightly of what cuts you most deeply."

"Very true." Tony raised Loki's hand to his mouth, kissing the painty knuckles.

"And so I have come up to say two things to you. This first is that a Mr. Samuelssen is below, and Kurt is showing to him the peculiarities of our kitchen, and whilst he seemed slightly startled, at first, by our dear friend's great beauty, he no longer seems so, and has begun to cook something that smells quite delicious. The second thing is to tell you, Tony, that I am yours, for all times that I am able to foresee, and that I wish to ask you—not on bended knee because the truth is I am still somewhat sore, especially after so strenuously practicing the art of fencing with Kurt this morning —would you consent, also, to be mine, as provided by the law of your country, and by the desires of your own heart?" Loki reached up into the air, into nothing, it seemed, his fingers and half his hand disappearing. When they returned from their temporary disappearance, something lay in Loki's palm.

Something round, and golden.

"That... ?" Tony pointed to the chunk of midair that had temporarily swallowed Loki's fingers.

"That? Oh, only a pocket universe. A trifle."

"Umn..." Tony began.

"This, this small thing, this other trifle..." A smile flickered across Loki's lips. "It is a thing I made, merely, meant originally only as a pledge of my heart, because I believed no more was allowed," Loki murmured, gazing down into his hand, eyes veiled by his long lashes. "I know that you are a man of wealth beyond imagining, in possession of any number of worthy things, but I have woven into the gold my great love, my faithfulness, along with eternal threads of strength and protection, though the ring is not a spell, as such, merely a promise."

He glanced up. "Will you take from me my promise, Tony?"

It was that damn, heart-wrenching poem again: " _I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."_

Tony stared at the gold band, nearly mesmerized. It was light, for a man's ring, but then, Loki had fantastic taste in most things, and Tony didn't exactly have giant fingers—the size, the slightly narrower width, would look good on him. Its design looked a little like the Viking artifacts he'd seen in museums, or something like Celtic knotwork, but it was even more intricate, more graceful. It was the most beautiful fucking piece of jewelry he'd ever seen, and the most magical.

"It's..." For a minute, he couldn't speak. "It's so... perfectly Loki. And yes, before you ask, that's a good thing. In fact, that's the best thing. The best of all things."

Tony scooted closer, taking Loki's face between his hands, kissing him deeply and sweetly. "So, of course, the answer is yes, absolutely, and not out of guilt, or for any of the completely stupid reasons I mentioned downstairs. The reason is because you are perfect."

"I'm not," Loki broke in.

"Nope, no arguments, you are. Remember how you told me I was 'perfectly Tony?' Well, you, my sweet baby, are perfectly Loki. I love you. I want to be with you for as many years as we're given. And I'm not even upset that you totally beat me to the punch, because I'd planned to propose to you."

Loki grinned, and slid the ring onto Tony's finger, where it immediately shrank to fit him better than any ring he'd owned in his life. He gave his boyfriend—now, he realized, his fiance—a sideways look, and watched that beautiful, heart-stopping, perfectly Loki grin grow. Tony had to kiss that grin. Had to. Had absolutely no choice in the matter.

"I imagine a bottle or so of the Charles Heidsieck 1995 _Blanc des Millenaires_ would be in order, sir?" J.A.R.V.I.S. put in, his snobby sommelier voice not even masking the fact that he was clearly pleased as punch with the turn of events.

"And maybe a couple of the Golden Star White Jasmine Sparkling Tea," Tony put in, "Since both my fiance and I have sworn off ordinary bubbly?"

"Whatever you require, sir," J. told him. "Incidentally, the package you requested should arrive shortly after luncheon."

"That was quick."

"The contents are vintage, requiring only minor alteration to be suitable."

"Secrets!" Loki exclaimed, as his grin grew teasing. "I made your ring with my own hands, imbued it with my own Craft, the substance of my spirit, and yet you asked J. to choose mine. You did. Admit the truth to me."

"You have talent and fantastic taste. J.A.R.V.I.S., among his many, many other skills, was born to have great taste and thus prevent me from mismatching my ties and pocket-squares. Seriously, would you want to wear something I'd chosen?"

"No!" Loki and J. both chimed in, in unison, before laughing their asses off.

When he could (and still occasionally breaking into giggles), Lok said, "I have thought of a solution also, to the other situation, the unpleasantness with my colleagues in the Department of Design. Your company, does it not, maintains a mentor-learner program, akin to the internship to which I was previously bound?"

"Uh, yeah..." Tony had a feeling he knew where Loki was going with this.

"Amongst your titles is 'Director of Special Projects,' is it not? Shift me laterally to Special Projects with your good self as my mentor and me as your learner. I will continue as a Stark Industries employee and involve myself directly, by your command, in the design of any project your heart holds dear. I shall no longer be mocked for my appearance, my speech, or my supposed nepotistic privilege, you shall not have to judge worthless drivel in meritless contests, and I shall be freed from all time from the evil machine of photocopying and its constantly depleting toner, which persists on flinging itself throughout the office whenever I attempt to swap out the cartridge.

"I do want to contribute, beloved. I wish to bring wealth and renown to you and to dear Pepper, in whatever way I am able. I do not wish to be covered from head to foot in black powder, or to be hated by those to whom I've done no harm. I have returned the cards of gifting to Ms. Carnehan, even though one was from Amazon and I might have ordered many, many books with it, and have requested that the staff decide between them to which cause of goodness the proceeds ought to be distributed."

"Channeling your internal businessman?" Tony grinned. "Good thinking, Lok."

"And also..." Loki gave Tony puppy-eyes on an epic scale. "I am most heartily sorry to have cursed the Department of Design with the Sickness of Brief-But-Violent Purging, and that the sickness has now spread throughout the tower, which was never my intent. I have taken steps to see it spreads no more, but I am very sorry that some amongst our friends have become ill. Truly, Tony, it was never intended."

"You can't do stuff like that, Lok," Tony told him, trying to be stern, though the refrain running through his head was nothing but, _Must-not-laugh, must-not-laugh_. "Never again, okay? It's not kind, even if they were assholes to you, babe, and it could really hurt someone. Plus, it's hell on productivity."

"I realize that now," Loki told him, at least sounding contrite. "Mischief ever has a way of getting out of hand. That is correct, also? ' _Getting out of hand_?'"

"You got it. ' _Mischief makes mischief_ ,' human Jarvis used to say."

"Edwin. His name was Edwin." Loki leaned his cheek against Tony's shoulder. "I love you, and I am thankful, always, to Edwin, who preserved the loving heart alive within you, dearest, for me to find, and to know."

"I never thought of it that way," Tony answered, combing his fingers softly through Loki's silky curls. "I love you too, my god of mischief."

"I did not drink the smoothie you made me, but not because I was angry with you, only because the lessons of honored Mr. Tobit were so interesting, and the paint so..." Loki extended the paintsplotched hand not currently entwined with Tony's. "Oh, Tony, the color, the light, the texture, they are everything! Everything I ever wished and hoped for. And these are only the acrylic paints, the most flexible but perhaps less sophisticated of paints. Still to learn are the watercolors, and the oils. What I shall be able to do with the oils!

"Please know, beloved," Loki went on, "How happy I am with my life, even when I become nervous, or offended by small things, or when low people call me unkind names. Still, I am happy here. I tried to ask Thor, tried even to peek into his thoughts, which are slow as glaciers, incidentally, and I found... oh, perhaps I had happiness, or something very near to happiness, with Sigyn and the boys, but even in the depths of my brother's thoughts, I found nothing like this... This freedom, this joy, this..."

His hand stretched out again, fingers spread, and looking into those green eyes of his was like looking into a well that ran down as deep as the center of the world, or maybe like looking into the million clustered stars of a far-off universe.

"I am Loki," he finished simply. "Now, and only now, I am Loki."


	14. The Brother's Tale

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony has a couple bad days, then Loki goes back to school and has a _really_ bad day. Thor tells a story that makes sense of several events.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A tagine pot does resemble small volcano, complete with a vent at the top. They're used as a North African Berber  
> crockpot, and are perfect for cooking lamb stews.
> 
> The go-to science fair project for less-than-imaginative students is a volcano molded out of clay or papier mache. Place a container of bicarbonate of soda  
> (aka baking soda) inside the caldera, add vinegar and-- _voila!_ instant eruption. The more discriminating junior scientist will also add red food-coloring to the mixture for that nice molten lava hue.
> 
> The heavy metal band Metallica was formed in Los Angeles, California in 1981. Their best known song is probably 1991's "Enter Sandman."
> 
> I'm told the top pen for scribbling on iPads) is the "Penultimate." Tony would undoubtedly describe his similar "StarkUltimate" as the superior product. so. A StarkBox is the equivalent of a bluetooth speaker, and will work with your StarkPhone, your StarkTunes music player or your StarkView streaming device.
> 
> The phrase "hoist with his own petard,"  
> meaning "blown up with his own bomb," comes from _Hamlet_ , Act 3, Scene 4.
> 
> "Roast beast" is what the Dr. Suess's Whos, in Whoville, eat for their Christmas dinner.
> 
> Chef Marcus Samuelssen, a Swede of African descent, specializes in both Scandinavian and African cuisine.

* * *

The Tobits’ visit, the painting lesson, and the subsequent lunch (with a row of red-glazed tagine pots lined up along the table (reminding Tony for all the world of the fake volcanoes unimaginative schoolkids brought to their science fairs, ready to spout baking soda, vinegar and food-coloring lava) proved a great success.

The aftermath… not so much… as the Sickness of Brief-But-Violent-Purging made an appearance in the penthouse, and it was up in the air whether who was going to die first, Tony by acute nausea, or Loki by excess of shame. Kurt, who would have known perfectly well how to handle both a sick, cranky Tony and a contrite, panicking Loki, had already absconded to spend the rest of the weekend in Salem Center with Logan, and Bruce, who, of course, was not only a doctor but, thanks to Big Green, immune to everything on earth (and probably beyond), was off at some tree-huggers’ convention in Vermont. Which left J.A.R.V.I.S. to man the fort, so to speak.

And Loki. Loki, it had to be said, was terribly sweet. He put fresh sheets on the bed. He fetched water and Sprite as requested, and rubbed Tony’s back and would, if allowed, even have held his head.

The thing was, for Tony—and stretching as far back as he could remember--that was last kind of attention he wanted. As in, he was fine with friends bringing soup and binging on movies with him when he had a bad cold, but when his stomach felt gross he _strongly_ preferred to be left the fuck alone, thank you very much. He preferred to feel free to moan and groan (and vomit) in peace, without having to worry about his manners or consider anyone else’s feelings. He would have been fine with Loki hanging downstairs, painting or reading or watching TV, maybe bringing up a bottle of water or a soda every couple of hours and making sure Tony was still among the living. Maybe tossing him a fresh t-shirt and pair of boxers from time to time. No other help required.

But, oh no, not his Loki! Loki wanted to prove his love. He wanted to show how sorry he was for Tony’s misery, and how helpful he could be--and how _much_ he wanted those things not only struck Tony as heartbreaking, it was slightly more than he could handle at that particular time.

Had he mentioned CRANKY?

The worst of all was when Loki, in his extreme contriteness, attempted to heal him, with the result that Tony immediately felt much less pukey (though still grouchy, achy and exhausted) but Loki’s nose decided to imitate one of those previously-mentioned fake volcanos, only with actual blood in place of the acid/base (and red food coloring) reaction.

Which made Tony throw up again. Because _ewww_ blood.

Which, in turn, made Loki go to ground in his old room in an advanced state of freak-out. Which made J.A.R.V.I.S. summon Pepper (now feeling pretty decent, but with her hair in a sloppy ponytail and wearing pink pj’s printed with little white lambs and clouds) to sort out both of them.

Pepper, being Pepper, was decent--even nice--about having her convalescence interrupted, and her state of relative health gave Tony hope for the future.

“Oh, Loki healed me,” she said, in a casual-yet-slightly-amazed tone of voice. “I think he fixed Phil and Clint, too.

” Which bore consideration, _vis-à-vis_ former gods and their physical limits, and probably explained Loki’s impromptu volcano-imitation.

Tony made it through Sunday, had his P.A. clear the boards for Monday, and spent the day sleeping. Tuesday morning, found him back in his thoroughly-soundproofed office, singing merrily along—with occasional bouts of pen-drumming--as Metallica blasted from the StarkBox speakers.

Despite the singing (and the drumming), he actually found himself being productive (for a change) after his enforced absence, reading things, signing other things, scribbling semi-legible notes via his StarkUltimate pen in the margins of the latest offerings from R & D.

Not long after his exciting chicken noodle soup lunch, a call from Loki rang through. Vanessa (his latest victim… that is, er, P.A.), had the strictest possible instructions to let all Loki’s calls ring through without delay, though they both still referred to him as Tony’s “cousin.”

Tony grinned when he saw the number flash across his screen. "Babe! I have about five minutes before my oft-postponed two o'clock meeting, but every second of that time is yours, and yours alone."

"Ah," Loki said. "Selfishly, I had forgotten. It's a very important meeting, yes?"

"Uh, middling. Not something I can skip out of, having already bailed once. After the time before when everyone else had to bail… And I think we know why. Which means, I guess, yes, it’s important."

"Yes, I remember now, and I must, as you remind me, carry the blame for both cancellations."

“Lok, no. You know I’m not mad at you, I was only teasing. It was an honest mistake. Maybe not your best honest mistake, but an honest mistake. Remind me to catch you up to speed on Midgardian pranking one of these days.”

A fairly dismal pause followed, during which Tony remembered how difficult his boyfriend had been to shift out of bed that morning, and how he'd dragged through breakfast. Tony still wasn't quite back to the breakfast burrito stage himself, but his toast had tasted pretty damn great. Loki hadn't even wanted that much, just sipped unenthusiastically at a cup of tea. He'd done everything but lay his head on the table and moan.

Tony worried a lot about Loki at best of times.  He couldn’t help himself. Other times he just forgot what a big new world this was for his fiancé, how nasty his fellow human beings could be, and that often there wasn’t the kind of separation you might expect between the schoolyard and the boardroom. He forgot that a man he found beautiful, arousing, awe-inspiring, might seem to others freakish and threatening. It wasn’t right, but it happened.

Loki said he was happy with his new life, and Tony believed him—but he also believed the bulk of that happiness was confined to art school, the workshop Loki shared with his brother, and the upper floors of the tower. Every step he took outside, Tony knew, was an act of courage on Loki's part, and the danger for him was real, not something he'd made up. The stress his fiancé carried, and mostly tried to carry alone (the ridiculousness with the Design Department being a prime example of the shit Loki shouldn't have had to wade through, though at least mess had ended now), most of it locked away inside himself, had to be draining.

Tony knew how much Loki wanted to be perfect in every little thing. He also knew how much he himself had contributed to the pressure with his own lack of attention and sometimes-thoughtless words, even words he’d meant humorously. Even the past couple days... So, no more of that, not if he could possibly help it.

"Be mindful," Bruce always said.

“Be aware of where you are and who you're with.”

“Think, then speak.”

Bruce could be pretty smart, now and then.

"Babe, are you not feeling good now?" Tony asked gently. "Do you need me to come get you?"

"You have your meeting," Loki answered--which wasn't really an answer.

"Kinda not what I asked, Lok."

"I was sick at school, Tony. It was horrible. Though the others were quite sympathetic, and Athena, my good new friend, walked with me to Mr. Tobit's office, and Mr. Tobit kindly allowed me to lie upon his sofa after all the clutter had been cleared away to the floor. I am deeply shamed, all the more so for knowing full well that I have, to paraphrase, been 'hoist with my own petard.'”

_Been what with your what?_ Tony thought. He had a vague idea the words were Shakespeare, but what the hell?

“Exploded myself with my own bomb,” Loki clarified.

“Oh, baby,” Tony said sympathetically, knowing full well this was not the time to laugh and point, especially when Loki had tried to be so very sweet taking care of him, and was now so miserable.

“Now I feel strange and terrible, Tony, but you have your meeting and must attend, and I would not have it another... Oh, please excuse me..."

The sounds that followed weren't pleasant by any means, and Tony cringed in sympathy, all the more so for having recently visited that territory himself.

With his free hand he pinged his P.A., who popped her head in the door almost immediately. He really did like this one. She had pretty eyes--not that that was a job requirement, by any means. Pepper's P.A. had the eyes of Soviet sniper from the height of the Cold War, even Natasha said so, but his P.A.'s eyes were mostly pretty because they were also lively and kind, and he liked the way, too, she smiled easily. He sincerely hoped he didn't drive her away to a life of yogurt-making and yurt-dwelling in New Mexico, the way he had all the others.

Tony listened briefly to the receiver before he spoke: wherever Loki was, RetchFest continued. And he knew he _should_ go pick up his fiance at school. Him personally, and no other, because even worse than feeling wretchedly sick (pun fully intended), Loki was probably drowning in shame again, and wouldn’t want to share that with just anyone, least of all with some driver he didn’t know. On the other hand, the fact remained that Tony had a business to run, this meeting couldn’t go forward without him, and had already been cancelled twice--and, also, he was totally shit at this sort of thing...

He made a decision. Probably not the right one.

"Vanessa, I've got that damn meeting. Would you kindly get Mr. Hogan on the line, tell him I know he’s busy and I’ll owe him big-time, but would he pretty please grab a bucket and a can of ginger ale and pick up my… uh… cousin at school?"

“Of course, Mr. Stark. Please tell Loki I hope he feels better.” His P.A. smiled and flitted out again.

_Lok, you charmer,_ Tony thought, because Vanessa had sounded sincere (she seemed to be a sincere and genuine person, two more points in her favor), but she’d also spoken Loki’s name with a certain element of fondness.

“Did you hear, babe? Vanessa sent you a ‘get well soon.’”

"Vanessa is lovely, but Happy has other duties," Loki gasped into the phone.

"Oh, so you're planning to ride the subway home?" Tony asked, which really was abuse of sarcasm, and he'd only said it because he felt guilty, Loki really having tried so hard over the past couple days. "Next time, please tell me to fuck off if I try to light a fire under you when you're not feeling good. You could have stayed home snug in bed. You should have, baby."

"This morning I only..." Loki began, then that was it.

Though he hated to do it, Tony hung up the phone. Loki was in no condition to talk, and Pepper had now appeared in the doorway, tapping the face of her watch.

"On my way," Tony told her, trying without much success not to snap. "Loki's not feeling great. I needed to arrange transportation."

Pep's mouth did that little sympathetic thing it sometimes did. "Poor sweetie. This was how you repaid him for looking after you?"

"Damn bug.” He'd take the secret of the true source of the Sickness of Brief-But-Violent-Purging to his grave. “ I swear I'm installing those ultraviolet germ-killing lights on every fucking floor."

"At this point, I'd sign off on the expense," Pepper told him. She’d had chicken-noodle soup for lunch too.

 

Naturally, the meeting dragged on. And on. For hours and hours, until Tony was ready to fire everyone, even the folks who didn't actually work for him.

He could say "damn bug" like it was nothing, but he still worried. So imagine his surprise when he finally made it home at a quarter to six and found Loki and Happy ensconced together on the couch, watching Downton Abbey and eating pizza.

Loki was leaning against Hap's arm, and looked washed-out and tired, but otherwise perfectly cheerful, not at all like he'd sounded earlier. There were four, count them four, nearly empty pizza boxes on the table.

Tony seriously wanted a drink. He settled for fetching himself a Coke from the fridge instead.

Happy met him in the kitchen, telling him, _sotto voce_ , "I know, boss. I know. He was just miserable, throwing up internal organs, I swear, until two blocks from the tower. The minute we walked in the front door, he was suddenly starving. By the time I got him upstairs he was begging for pizza, just had to have it, nothing else would do. It's just like my brother Mike's wife, Rachelle, with her first two..." Happy suddenly seemed to hear what he was saying. His jaw dropped. "Oh, sweet baby Jesus, boss, uh... That's not..."

Coke still in hand, Tony marched across the living room to the elevator, only vaguely hearing Loki's calling his name. The state he found himself in by the time he reached Thor's door could only be described as indescribable.

The god of thunder, looking giant and smiley and Norse, opened up, a large bowl of what appeared to be chicken stir-fry in one hand. "Tony!" He exclaimed. "Great is my delight at seeing you here! Have we foes to smite at this present time, or would you care to join us for dinner?"

Suddenly Tony couldn't imagine how to bring up the subject he wanted to breech. He'd taken off from home meaning to interrogate Thor, or accuse him of withholding evidence, or... something, all on the basis of Happy's off-handed remark.

Now he didn't know what to say. He felt like an idiot.

"Ah," Thor said. "It is about my brother."

Still speechless, Tony followed him inside.

Thor set his bowl down on the cheerfully-retro, cherry-patterned tablecloth that covered Thor and Jane's table and sank down on their big, overstuffed couch, head in hands. "Tell me, friend and soon-to-be-brother-by law Tony. What is amiss?"

Loki popped into existence out of abso- _fucking_ -lutely nowhere, as he’d started to do more and more frequently as his confidence grew.

"Nothing!" he snapped, totally un-Lokilike--or, at least, completely unlike the Loki of present times.  "I have done nothing! I felt very terrible all day, and then recovered, and now everyone is angry. Why should everyone be angry if I wish to eat pizza? I've harmed no one! Is it because I took Happy from his work, then felt better after? Tony, I would hope you'd want me to feel well, even if I did disrupt your henchman's ordinary duties. It was you who called him. I did not!"

"Oh." He swayed suddenly, his face fading in a instantly to the palest possible blue, the pulse beating visibly in his throat. "Oh. I don’t feel well. Perhaps I should not have..."

Thor wrapped one massive arm around his brother, steering him toward the supremely comfortable couch. "Sit here, dear one, and forgive my wrongness of thought. No one is angry with you, Loki. Tony is not angry, only filled with confusion and concern."

The look he shot Tony over the top of Loki's head told him he'd better be fucking _filled_ with concern, to the tippy-top, or someone was going to be Mjolnirated in short order. Loki, meanwhile, clung to Thor, burst into tears, and sobbed against his brother's manly chest like a heartbroken little kid, pain flooding out of him in a deep, fast-moving, concentrated, toxic river.

Tony felt extra terrible, because whatever he'd thought Loki was carrying emotion-wise, he’d never guessed it was this much, or this bad. He wanted to do something, anything, only he didn't know what. When he finally stopped sobbing, Loki just kind of keeled over onto his brother’s lap.

Jane, who'd watched all this with quiet attention, brought over a knitted blanket, tucking it tenderly around Loki's thin shoulders. “Maybe he doesn’t know how to handle being sick,” she said. “I bet you wouldn’t, Thor.”

“Loki has been ill before,” Thor answered tersely. “He is like me, yet not alike. Where is the friendly fire-demon who abides in your dwelling, Shield-Brother?”

Well, that was a new one.

“You mean Kurt? Still at school,” Tony answered, glancing at his phone. ”Though he should be home in a minute or two. Why, do you think Loki needs a doctor? Isn’t it just the flu?”

The god of thunder gave him a look. A definite, _You mean you haven’t noticed?_ look, which was different, because usually Thor only displayed something like the express train of emotions, with limited stops at angry, confused, amused and worthy.

“Thor,” Jane said mildly. She dished up stir-fry into a Papa Bear bowl, which went to Thor, a Mama Bear bowl for Tony, a Baby Bear bowl for herself (and no wonder she was so little if that was all she ate) with the remainder going into a plastic container in the fridge. She passed out chopsticks.

“I am learning the skill,” Thor announced, and dug in, doing surprisingly well, all things considered.

Tony himself did okay with chopsticks as long as he didn’t think about them. The second he let a conscious thought slip in, that was all she wrote.  He didn't really feel like eating, but he ate, half to be polite, half out of sheer stress.

“Wow, this is good,” he said, careful not to direct the compliment in any particular direction. He’d been on the receiving end of more than enough, “Why do you assume…?” questions from Jane in his lifetime, questions she was probably right to have asked. Tony was perfectly willing to admit that his generation could harbor some pretty fucked-up ideas, and he was better off without them.

He also knew better than to rush Thor's thought process, such as it was. Better to let him eat, and ruminate.

“Jane introduced me to a marvelous vessel of cooking named a ‘wok,’” Thor told him. “I might well delight to use it each and every day, if allowed. I run many searches on StarkLook upon the subject of PanAsian Cuisine and have acquired a number of recipes which, in time, I intend to assay. The food of Asgard, though satisfying, attains a sameness after years.”

“Roast beast and ale,” Jane put in with a smile, “And plenty of it.”

“So, you’ve been there?” Tony gestured with his head. “Upstairs?”

“It’s a long story,” Jane answered, and that was it. She wasn’t smiling any longer.

“I enjoyed also the Moroccan food Mr. Samuelssen cooked for us at your request, ShieldBrother,” Thor said, clearly trying to fill the silence that ensued. It was something Tony had noticed about Loki’s brother—he was not only an extrovert in the usual sense, he actually seemed to hate the normal periods of quiet that came into any conversation. Or maybe hate wasn’t the right word. Maybe "feared" was.

Maybe the mighty Thor, who didn’t seem scared of anything, had a real terror of what might creep in when those silences were allowed to linger.

“Yeah, that was pretty amazing,” Tony answered, which was true—Marcus had cooked a great meal for them, one that was in no way to blame for his later… uh… difficulties. However, the subject of tagine-cooked lamb shanks with apricots and couscous was not one Tony found himself quite yet ready to revisit, especially with the memory of a different type of revisiting so recent in his memory.

Loki stirred a little in his brother’s lap, letting out a soft, breathy moan, definitely not a moan of pleasure.

“Jane, best-beloved,” Thor said genially, “Will you, in your kindness, reheat the last of the portions for my dear Loki?” He rubbed his brother’s shoulder gently, crooning words in a language Tony didn’t recognize.

“Thor, buddy, he just ate, like, two whole pizzas.”

“And has he taken in other nourishment today?” Thor asked. “For if he does not take enough, he will be weak, and suffer fluctuations of mood, and his belly will give him far more misery. Also, your child will not grow properly, as it ought to.”

And there it was, hot on the heels of Happy’s off-hand comment, the other shoe dropping, the penny falling…

“Um...” Tony said.

“Now that you are betrothed and have mutually exchanged tokens of troth in the eyes of family and friends, the event—though not of the usual--is perfectly honorable and not in any way unworthy,” Thor assured him.

“Um,” Tony said again.

Jane got up, went into the bathroom, and returned with a damp, cool washcloth, pressing it gently to the back of Tony's neck as she rubbed his shoulder, much as Thor had rubbed Loki’s.

“The oddest thing is,” she told him kindly, “That you’ll eventually get used to these situations as they crop up.”

The microwave pinged. Jane tidily transferred the left-over stir-fry to a green bowl, bringing that and a fork over to Loki.

“Honey,” she said, giving his shoulder a little shake, “I made you something to eat. Do you want to sit up a little?”

To say that Loki devoured the food was probably not a strong enough description. He looked just about ready to start in next on Thor’s jeans or the couch upholstery, only Jane slowed him down with a gallon of milk and three packs of Pop-tarts (Tony heard Thor whisper, “Those were mine!” in something like anguish, but his girlfriend shot him a stern look). At which point a knock came at the door. Jane got up to answer, admitting Kurt, who was carrying a large paper bag.

Loki perked right up. “Oh, Kurt, is that the excellent food of China you have brought with you? Well could I embrace you, like the dearest of brothers!”

Kurt smiled and passed him a carton. “Egg fu young. I think you’ll like it.” He handed a tall cup to Tony. “I wasn’t sure if you’d eaten. It’s egg drop soup, very gentle.”

Tony wasn’t really hungry, but he enjoyed the warmth of the cup between his palms. Other than that, he felt like he'd fallen asleep and into some weird dream, one of those dreams in which everything felt totally normal, except for that one thing that turned out to be so, so strange.

Kurt kept passing cartons to Loki, Loki kept chowing down, and their German friend and Jane kept up a polite chit-chat about their school days, the classes Jane had started teaching at Columbia, Kurt’s med school studies.

It all seemed surreal.

Tony sat there as if he'd been flash-frozen, his cup going cold in his hand.

Eventually, Kurt glanced at his watch. “Bruce should be ready for us now. Loki, are you ready?”

Loki shook his head, the picture of childish obstinance. “It is foolish. And unnecessary.”

“It won’t hurt,” Kurt promised. “At most you’ll feel a little hum through your skin, a little bit of a vibration, and then you’ll know for certain, one way or another. It’s not even messy.”

Loki looked like he was going to throw up again. His hands clenched together and Tony could actually see the pulse beating in his temple as well as his throat. “No, Kurt. No. No, Kurt. Please.”

“What the actual fuck?” Tony didn’t know exactly how he’d meant the words, but they came out low and threatening (he was pretty sure that wasn’t at all what he intended). He set the now stone-cold cup down on an end table and finally shifted his ass over to the sofa, right next to Loki, who appeared to be heading into meltdown.

“Baby…” He tried to take one of Loki’s hands, but the fingers were all twisted up together and he couldn’t separate them. He settled on clutching both as they were.

“Kurt,” he tried next, “What is it you’re wanting to do to him? What has Loki so scared?”

Kurt had the look of a man combining yoga-breathing with counting slowly back from ten.

“The forces of Asgard rode into Jötunnheimr,” Thor said suddenly, apropos of fuck-all.

“They fought with fire, with magic, with the strength of spear and sword, and all fell before them, until the icy strongholds of the _Jötnar_ shattered with their violence and the Casket of Ancient Winters, repository of all _Jötunn_ wisdom and all _Jötunn_ might, was taken into _Aesir_ hands. Yet still the troops of Asgard marched, under the command that all must be broken, all destroyed, citadels and temples, palaces and lowly huts. Yet even as the _Aesir_ went, the ragged armies of the _Jötnar_ , propelled by the Craft and cunning of Laufey King, worried at their heels, for the _Jötnar_ were one with the ice, one with the darkness, one with the crags and pinnacles.

"Out of the void they would come, and into the void return, leaving the bloodied bones of _Aesir_ warriors bare upon the trails. And so it was, the war raging on, until those days when Odin Allfather himself rode forth upon the Bifrost, and by the might and magic of his hands was Laufey King trapped, as a wild beast is trapped, and with him the last of his commanders, and they… and they were brought to the High Citadel of the Winds, where the deepest ice entombs the remains of their ancestors, and beneath those unmoving eyes the… the King of the _Aesir_ and his noblemen…” Thor spoke the word “noble” like he was biting down on something bitter.

“These noble men, this king, unclasped their belts, and their breeches, and took… what is often taken in time of war, to break the spirit of the _Jötnar_ , to bring them utterly to shame.  By their ruler's command, the men might take what and where they would, excepting that that Odin Allfather alone might touch Laufey the King.

“Then the _Aesir_ cut the throats of all those _Jötnar_ who yet lived, so that they bled out red upon the white of the snow, excepting again only Laufey their king, that he might see, and mourn his fallen, and behold what he had brought them to, in daring to defy and defend. There, in that same place, was Laufey kept and guarded, bound fast in cold irons and divers spells, beneath the sightless eyes of his fathers and the frozen blood of his warriors, until eighteen moons had waxed and waned and the fallen king brought forth a son—for such is the way of the _Jötnar_ , whose women have long since gone from that world, excepting only the three Nornir witches who are taxed with spinning out the threads of our lives--and also, it is said, Queen Hela, she who rules the Dismal Lands.

“The son of Laufey brought into the world, it is told, was a tiny blue child who smiled, and laughed, and kicked his feet, as children will do, innocent of the sorrows of his world.

“Then Odin Allfather tore the child from the arms of Laufey King, and held him high, the smile still bright upon his small blue face, as if he who ruled the _Aesir_ might dash his new-born body upon the hardness of the ice, as Laufey King cried out in a loud voice, ‘No, no, I beg of you, not my son!  Not my son!’

“A sly smile crossed the face of the _Aesir_ King, his one eye glinting with the light of a cold star.  He cradled the little one then in his arms, and a pallor white as any snow drifted across the child's night-blue skin. “’Do you like him, Laufey King, this child of ours?’ Odin Allfather mocked. ‘Do you find him handsome, pale as the _Aes_ are pale? Do you find him merry? Then know now, I will take him, and I will teach him to hate every single thing he is—this, his home of Jötunnheimr, and his blood, and very flesh.  He shall never know the truth of any event that has passed in these days until I am best prepared to vent my hatred upon his innocence. For that is what he is, the spawn of my hate for you, and yours for me, and I will name him Loki, and make of him the fire to burn you.”

Thor wrapped his arms tightly around his brother—his half-brother, really, Tony guessed, but still his brother—and kissed Loki's forehead.

“In the hour before my final departure from the Golden City..." Thor went on, his deep voice cracking with stress. "I had this story from Volstagg, my friend, who had marched into  Jötunnheimr with our... father... the king, and who witnessed the shame—though he never called it shame, only sorrow, for in even in his _Aesir_ eyes, it was Laufey who bore himself ever like a king. The only shame was our never-again-father’s, that he would treat a foe so gloatingly, and with such dishonor, and would make of an innocent small child an instrument to vent his hate. I am heartily sorry for all you have suffered, Loki, and sorrier still for whatever parts, still enthralled to the King of Asgard, I took in later events. Only consider, I implore you, that now you are free, and I am also free, and always, we are brothers.”

“Oh,” Loki said. He looked completely brain-fried. “Oh.”

One of his long hands spread across his belly, and he gazed up at Tony with stricken eyes. “Oh, such a tale to hear at this time, and, oh, my love, what have I done to you, intending no deception, for I could not remember who I was, and now…”

“Loki, please.” Gently, Tony gathered him back from his brother’s arms. “Please don’t say any of those things—not even in your head. It’s the opposite of necessary.”

“Yet you were caught unawares,” Loki said.

“May I answer that with a big, ‘so what?’ Sure, I got knocked off kilter for a little bit, but what else is new? We’ll talk, we’ll work things through, just like we always do—though, it being your own personal body you get extra votes on this one. Whatever else, whatever decision we come to, I’m not unhappy, there’s no deception involved, and I love you always, okay?”

“Yes. Okay,” Loki said quietly. “Yes. Thor…”

Thor paused to blow his nose in a massive kind of way, then nodded. “Thor, the women of the _Jötnar_ …?”

“I am told…” Thor shook his head. “It is only said that were killed in the long-ago, and of them all only the Queens of Fate and of the Dismal Lands remain within the Realms. However, I cannot tell if this is real, or if it is merely a tale. Indeed, I only guess that the men of the _Jötnar_ are… as they are, and as you are, because how else might they continue as a people? And yet, unlike you, my Loki, I am no scholar. What do I know?”

“No longer am I a scholar, my brother,” Loki said, quietly and sadly, “I don’t know what I am.”

“An artist,” Tony said firmly. “A reader. My fiancé. Thor’s brother. Kurt’s friend. And also, always, as I believe you stated recently, ‘perfectly Loki.’ Sure, this changes some things—it’s bound to—but those are things like ordering a shit-ton more groceries each week, if you decide to go forth with this, and you getting enough rest, and more frequent check-ins with Hank—it doesn’t change the important stuff. It doesn’t change you.”

“We love you,” Jane said. “All of us. We’re your family, and we love you. Whatever you decide on, we’re there.”

Tony held him close, feeling the slight hitching in Loki’s breath as he fought not to explode into emotion.

“You heard the lady,” he whispered into Loki’s ear, and was glad to feel, against his own cheek, even if small and a little trembly, the familiar curve of Loki’s grin.


	15. Aftermath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony chats with Thor about past events

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Easy-Bake Oven, first introduced by the Kenner company in 1963, cooked very small pans of food with a light bulb as a heat source. These days they're manufactured by Hasbro and contain an actual heating element.
> 
> _The Jerry Springer Show_ , so far as I can tell, mostly involves fidelity-challenged couples fighting over whether the man is (or isn't) the father of the woman's child.
> 
> Active listening skills tend to be used by counselors, trainers, and in conflict resolution. An active listener is required to concentrate, understand, answer and keep in mind what's being said (as opposed to planning what he's going to say next while the speaker is still talking.
> 
> Folk-influenced British band Mumford & Sons was formed in 2007. Their lineup does include a Mumford (Marcus), but no actual sons.
> 
> A huge amount of information supplied all at once is known as an "info-dump."
> 
> A geas is a taboo (or vow, or spell) that can't be broken. It usually either prevents the one enchanted from doing something, or forces him to do something he would not ordinarily do by choice.
> 
> In the Old Norse creation story, Ask (male) and Embla (female) are the first two humans.

* * *

J.A.R.V.I.S., with his usual excellent sense of the right thing to do in any given situation, sent the elevator directly to the second floor of the penthouse. Loki darted out like a flash of pale-blue lightning, heading straight for their bedroom.

Tony glanced helplessly at Kurt, who gazed back at him steadily. He had that weird, antsy, crawly feeling of knowing he ought to do something, but having no idea what that something ought to be.

“Do we follow, or what?” he asked, finally.

A second later he answered his own question. “Of course we follow. What was I thinking?”

“It’s good for Loki to know the truth of his origins,” Kurt said, padding soundlessly next to Tony down the hall. His tail, totally un-sassified, dragged along the carpet behind him, leaving a little wake where it had traveled. “Hard, yes, but right. We all need to know who we are. Where we came from.” He ran both two-fingered hands back through his mop of blue-black curls.  
“Difficult as the knowing may be.”

Tony really had to wonder _who_ his friend was talking about just then—was it himself, or Loki? Kurt, for Kurt,  
had an unusually distracted look, puzzled and more than a little heartsick.

_Beg to differ, Kurt_ , Tony thought.

Aloud, he told his friend, "Sorry, I'm not sure I see it.”

Speaking of heartsick, Tony had always thought having one’s heart literally ache from sadness was a big old cliché.  Surprise, surprise--it wasn’t at all. His whole chest ached, in fact, for the damaged god he loved, and not just his heart.

“Because, always, you knew who you were,” Kurt answered, not arguing, just explaining in his usual kind way, as he often explained things to Loki. “You, knowing your parentage, could tell yourself, ‘I am brilliant, because I am the natural son of a brilliant and inventive man. I am kind, in part, because I am the son of a tender-hearted woman who, even if she was weak in certain ways, wasn’t too weak to love me to the best of her ability. I understand pain because my father hurt me, and he hurt her, and we could never have the least sense of peace or unity, as that same father, in all his arrogance, believed a family was only another of his possessions, there to be bullied and dominated.'”

What could Tony say to that? Every word Kurt spoke was true, his entire life in a paragraph.

"And you?" Tony asked.  Kurt often talked about the circus, or about his second life, with the X-Men.  About his parents?  Not so much.  Only the barest of bare basics.

"I don't mean to trouble you, Tony," Kurt added, not even acknowledging Tony's question. "That truly isn't my intent."

_That bad, huh, buddy?_ Tony thought, but didn't press the point.

"Nah. It's okay," he told Kurt. I hear what you're saying."

"You want to protect Loki, because of your love for him, and that's admirable--except that you may find that Loki's stronger than you expect. If half the stories in the mythology are true, or even half-truths, as the story of Sleipnir is true, it remains that he is still here, with us..." Kurt's expression turned--well, not so much dire, more as if all his features fell suddenly into shadow, so that Tony couldn't read anything at all.

_Well, that's one way to handle the situation_ , Tony thought.  He'd wished, every now and then, for similar talents.

Kurt always wanted so badly for them all to be happy together, to be comfortable and content, but maybe this wasn't one of those situations. Maybe there were times when they had to discuss difficult things.  He knew his friend would cheerfully fight Magneto, the Green Goblin, or Victor von Doom, swashing and buckling like hell--but god forbid his family life got a little tense.

Tony wondered if that was was Kurt's greatest fear--if having been literally tossed away like trash by the woman who gave him birth (Kurt hadn't _exactly_ said that's what happened, not in so many words, but Tony had _some_ ability to read between the lines), he worried about losing the homes, the families, he'd built around himself, the safe-zones he'd laid out where he didn't have to be wary, and could actually be himself.

"Kurt," Tony told him, trying speak as kindly to his friend as Kurt always spoke to him, "It'll be all right. It will, but we have to do this."

He pushed open the door. Loki lay face-down on top of the comforter, not sobbing, the way Tony half-expected, just lying there, completely still, exhausted on every level, in such emotional pain the emotion had become physical. Even Tony felt it--though at second hand--and could hardly bear it.

For something to do, an external expression of love, he pulled one of Loki’s favorite soft, plushy blankets off the top closet shelf and draped it over him. Kurt smoothed down the edges on his side of the bed.

“It’s a difficult thing,” Kurt said quietly, but with the strain clear in his voice “To know one’s life was kindled by loveless fires, whether by enmity, or ambition, or a selfish desire to place a copy of oneself in the world. We’re shown, again and again, the image of the perfect family, that, joyous, united, benevolent family, but so often, _lieber Bruder_ , that’s not the reality. Too often it’s not something we’re born into, but something, if we’re fortunate—as we _are_ fortunate, each of us—we find for ourselves when we go out into the world.”

"There’s even a name for that these days,” Tony said, with a grateful look at their friend. He sat beside his fiancé on the bed, tucking up his legs and snaking his hand under the blanket to rub Loki’s shoulders. “We call it a ‘family of choice.’ That’s what Jane was talking about.”

“Jane is kind,” Loki said at last, after pulling in a ragged breath. “I wish, though, that I knew, Tony—having bid farewell to the Golden City, is my brother happier now, living his ordinary life, an immortal among mortals, or did he know greater happiness before this time?”

“Babe, that’s not something you have to carry on your own shoulders. Thor’s a good guy, we could even say a hero. No one who fits that description could stomach living in the kind of world the Allfucker made for you. No one. Not even for a million suits of armor, the title of ‘prince’ and all the solid-gold toilet paper he can use.”

Another ragged breath, then Loki turned slowly over. “You are very foolish, beloved.”

“And you are very loved, my sweet baby.” Tony took Loki's hand, kissed the knuckles, then just held on, trying to project comfort, caring, acceptance with everything he possessed. “As for the other… well, I won’t say it isn’t unexpected, because, damn, it certainly is, and I won’t say I don’t have questions for Hank, and concerns about you…"

He flashed back to Natasha studying Loki’s scans, what seemed like ages and ages before, and saying, “It looks like a uterus.”

So, okay, Nat had been right, as usual—and he’d been incredibly forgetful when it came to what she'd said. But also, to cut himself some slack, that one scan aside, it wasn't as if Loki was a girl, or had visible girl-parts, or anything like that...

Frankly, if he'd done this to Loki, put a bun in his Easy-Bake Oven--which, okay, he knew he had, he'd done it, this wasn't low-life daytime TV, it wasn't the _Jerry Springer Show_ , and he'd never be one of those jerks, anyway, who'd stand up and bellow, "That's not my kid!"

That being Howard's trick, judging his faithful wife by his own fucked-up standards, despite how very, very much Tony had looked like him, as a boy and a young man and now, in his nose and his chin and his dark, unruly hair. The only way Tony could have _not_ been his son was if Howard had possessed a total asshat of an identical twin.

Shit, what was he even thinking? Loki was his fiance, Tony was his, and the baby in Loki's belly was indisputably theirs. He might not know exactly how that worked, but he'd take it for granted that it did.

He flashed back a second time to Edwin Jarvis sitting him down, age ten or something, delivering the full-on dad-talk about the birds and the bees. Being Jarvis, fine human being that he was, the lecture had included a section about caring, treating his partner with respect. With a gentle undercurrent of “love makes everything better.”

Years later, Tony found out about the Howard Stark bracelets, those damn bracelets, all alike, he'd made Jarvis buy and give to his women. Branding them. Making whores of them--because those bracelets weren't fond mementos, they were the equivalent, in Tony's mind, of leaving payment on the dresser.

Those bracelets had disgusted him, at a level so deep he'd...

Well, he'd let himself finally get serious with Pep, because he _wouldn't_ be like his father, not ever. Jarvis had been right about the love-and-sex connection, as he was about most things. Sex with Pepper, for whom he had such affection, had been joyful. They laughed a lot in bed, they were comfortable, happy, fulfilled.

Intimacy with Loki, who he loved now with everything he had to give, was (and no double entendre intended) mind-blowing, something he’d be happy with, he’d no doubt at all, for the rest of his days.

He’d never thought he’d say that, not ever. There had been a lot of women (and more than just a few guys) over the years, so many he’d forgotten most of their names, and their faces blurred together--and god, he wasn't proud of that fact. Pepper had been wrong about one thing, though: Tony didn’t manipulate. He didn’t need to. He was filthy, stinking rich, a man of power and position, besides which, he was funny, and not bad looking (an infinitely better deal in life than being bad and funny-looking, like so many of the creeps he and the Avengers ran into—the up-to-no-good bag-of-cats Loki of previous times had kind of been a welcome change from the usual).

Not to sound conceited—although Tony knew he totally did, or would have, if he'd said such a thing aloud--partners tended to flock to him, like moths around a lightbulb. He just took what they offered: fun, physical excitement, a night not spent all by his lonesome in a huge empty bed.

Tony didn’t lie to anyone. He always tried to be perfectly up front. It was what it was. He wore condoms, and made sure his short-term friends had a clear understanding both of what the encounter meant and what was called, euphemistically, “family planning” (in the same way sex shops in some Southern states were called "Marital Aid" Stores). As in, the former (their hook-up) was intended as an evening's entertainment for the two of them and, as for the latter (a family), he had no plans to start one at that particular moment.

Making a family had remained a dim, far-off, notion with the label, “Maybe someday. If I ever meet the right person.”

Yet, he, Tony Stark, Playboy, etc., etc., weird as it might seem given his past history, remained at heart a  
romantic.

He desperately  _wanted_ the right person, he always had. Someone who loved him as Tony, as the person he was, not for money or fame—or even genius. Someone didn't see him (as the trolls of _Frozen_ might sing) as a "bit of a fixer-upper." Someone he could laugh with, and who'd laugh with him.

Someone he could hold closely and warmly when he was afraid, and not have that person either pity or judge him.

Press the button to fast-forward, the express elevator to _someday_ , and here he was, with very much the right person  
lying in his (no, in _their_ ) bed.

That the right person was male (except in that one unusual feature), blue, and a god from another world didn’t, Tony realized, cause him much more than a ripple of momentary confusion. All of his concern, it hit him, was for Loki. He himself was fine, both with concept and execution.

One month, two months, a million months, it was all the same. He loved his remarkable god. That wouldn’t change. With Loki he wanted that long-delayed family. He wanted forever.

He wanted Loki to feel all of this, and truly hoped that he could.

“I do feel,” Loki said softly. “Only, Tony, I am so at sea, and so very weary. Would it injure your heart if I prayed only to be allowed to sleep? In the morning we may speak. For now, it isn’t in me.”

“Do you want me to stay with you, babe?”

“Are you weary also?”

“Tired, yes,” Tony answered, “But not quite ready to sleep. Totally ready, however, to be with you if you need me.”

“I know,” Loki told him, in the same subdued voice. “Truly, I believe, and I thank you, beloved.”

“But leave you alone and let you sleep?” Tony’s grin wavered slightly. “We'd take it as a given that you wouldn’t say it quite so bluntly.”

"Come back to me, please, when you are yourself prepared for sleep?"

"Wild dogs wouldn't keep me away," Tony answered.

"Why should there be...?" Loki began, then laughed at himself softly. "You use exaggeration to emphasize your point. I love you truly, Tony."

"I love you truly, too, babe." Tony bent down to gently kiss Loki's cheek. "And we can talk when you're ready to talk. No hurry."

“Loki, would you mind…?” Kurt put in. “Would it disturb you if I sat by the window and read?”

Tony threw their friend a grateful look. He'd been reluctant to leave his fiancé alone, feeling as Loki did both emotionally and physically—but he also hadn't wanted to disturb him with the spillover of his own busy little brain.

“Your mind is quiet, always," Loki answered, also sounding relieved, "And the texts you read for your studies dull in the extreme. No doubt they will hastily dispatch me to sleep.”

Tony touched Loki's hair, ran his fingers along the perfect spiral of his left horn, which he knew Loki always found comforting. He hoped to hell Loki hadn't caught three-quarters of the shit that had recently passed through his head, although he guessed, by the peaceful (if slightly sad) expression on his fiancé's face that he probably hadn't.

At any rate, he'd dropped off to sleep beneath his fuzzy blanket, too exhausted and emotionally worn to stay awake.

"Mr. Odinson awaits you downstairs," J.A.R.V.I.S. informed Tony, at his softest audible volume.

"Tell him I'll be there in a few," Tony said. "Tell him to help himself to the fridge. Unlock the liquor cabinet, or the cooler if he wants something—only don't let me do the same, even if I beg. I just need to let Kurt fetch his books."

"I shall inform our visitor," J.A.R.V.I.S. answered.

Kurt excused himself to the hallway, bamfed off and was back in seconds, the messenger bag he used for his school stuff slung cross-body. He cupped his hands behind his pointy ears with a slightly teasing smile "Active listening, please, Tony?"

"You bet. Active as hell." Tony answered, with a grin.  Kurt did have a point. He sometimes found discussions with Loki's brother a wee bit trying. His mind tended to wander.

He didn't exactly rush down the stairs.

Tony found Thor on the sofa, sipping from a bottle of beer (Jane Foster, it seemed, had been something of a civilizing influence, especially in regards to Thor banging  the remains of stuff he liked on the table and shouting, "Another!" at ear-splitting volume).  He found something that sounded like some kind of Scandinavian Mumford & Sons on StarkTunes and sat listening in apparent happiness, nodding in time to the music--though he thumbed the remote to shut off his tunes when Tony  
approached.

"Look at you, Thor Odinson, getting savvy with the tech!"

"Your kind Ghost in the Wall instructed me in its use," Thor answered. Like Loki, he appeared to utterly reject the existence of A.I. (and possibly wall speakers).  He'd also put an ice bucket full of ice, stocked with what appeared to be a dozen more beers,  on top of a couple coasters on the coffee table.

"Half are actually the root beers of Mr. Henry Weinhard," his guest assured him, "Which, although brewed, are not in fact beers at all and contain no alcohol. I hope you will not object to my own indulgence."

"Wouldn't dream of it, Thor," Tony said. "Your issues aren't my issues. Do people upstairs..."  He pointed at the ceiling, as if Asgard somehow happened to be hovering over Avengers Tower, like some magic-infested helicarrier.  "That is, do your people even get addictions?"

Thor stared. Tony could practically hear the gears grinding as his brain engaged—but then the lightbulb seemed to go on over the thunder-god's head.

"By 'upstairs,' you mean Asgard." Thor laughed. "Amusing, friend Tony, betrothed of my brother!"

Tony smiled back, dropped down onto the other end of the couch and cracked open a soda.

"We do not experience, as you do, physical need for ale, or for other libations. We do, however..." Thor shifted uncomfortably, taking a long pull on his beer. "Those who fought in the Wars of Jötunnheimr... I mentioned to you my friend Volstagg. My dear friend, who is always jolly in appearance... We jest with him about his appetites for mead, for ale, for wine and for food, but  
perhaps we should not." Thor's bright blue eyes met Tony's, full of a naked emotion Tony wasn't quite able to interpret.. "No, perhaps we should not."

Tony suddenly got what Thor was trying to tell him: Asgardian warriors ate, drank and made merry, because Asgardian warriors wouldn't ever suffer the Golden City version of PTSD. Not them!

Even if they did.

"Volstagg also traveled with us, with my mother, and with me, when we freed Loki from the cavern, in which my father had... enclosed him."

"Cavern?" Tony asked, but Thor didn't seem to hear.

"Volstagg, my friend, bore Sigyn's poor body from the darkness and into the light. She was allowed no ship to carry her forth, but in defiance of my father's will we built a pyre. I believe that she, sweet lady, will have journeyed on. She will not have lingered to haunt that drear place, and Queen Hela will treat her with kindness, for she possessed courage beyond any lady I have known, excepting not even my Shield-Sister Sif, or my brave Lady Jane. The _Vanir_ , as Sigyn was, and my revered mother, are much like my people, the _Aesir_ , excepting only that their ability to heal is a lesser thing than ours. A grave hurt that we may survive, may cause them to perish, and so it was with Sigyn. Loki might live through the awful burning of the poison, but she, dear lady, although its touch fell far more lightly upon her skin, could not."

"Let me guess," Tony said drily. "Dear old dad again?"

"Dear to me no longer, I fear," Thor told him, and looked sad, like a golden retriever puppy that's been smacked on the nose with a newspaper—yet Tony understood that the god felt more than his face revealed, that on this particular subject, his feelings ran far from shallow.

"Loki has borne three children," the thunder god said suddenly.

Tony sensed an info-dump ahead, and steeled himself. Info-dumps about Loki's past life, in his experience, rarely equaled good.

"Unfortunate Sleipnir you know of, and you know also of the manner of his conception. Neither you, nor I, Shield-Brother, know how Narfi and Vali came to be, for much was rumored of their engendering, and much concealed. Never did their father claim them."

"And what did Loki have to say?"

"No word of their sire was known to pass his lips, and it was thought--that is, I have always believed--that upon my brother was placed a spell of some extraordinary sort. It must have been of a singular sort to have been able to touch Loki, with all his magics."

Thoughtfully, Thor opened his second beer.

"Perhaps it may have been a geas," the thunder-god continued, "Or an enchantment of forgetting. Loki was given to Sigyn with twin boys in his belly, and because, by early sickness, she had been brought barren, and also that in her good heart she felt a great kindness toward all children, Sigyn found joy in claiming Loki's as her own.

"But they were not her own. In close concealment, he carried them, and in secrecy gave them birth, and to all it was put forth that they came from out of the belly of Loki's wife, that she would not be shamed by her barrenness, and the House of Odin not be shamed that its second son was... That Loki might..."

Thor's hand made a waving gesture, in a vaguely pubic region.

"That a son of Odin carried children," Tony put in.  "Even though he didn't have... uh... lady-parts."

"Even so." Thor nodded. "Also was there no hint of magic, and with knives my mother and Eir, Chief of Healers, in greatest secrecy, cut the babes from him. Perhaps Dr. Henry McCoy may shed light on the subject. Indeed, Shield-Brother, I beg for your indulgence. I had not known that you and my Loki had become..."

"Intimate," Tony said. His dry voice was getting quite the workout this particular evening.

"I had not guessed--and for this I pray that you forgive me--that a son of Ask and Embla might plant a seed in the belly of one such as Loki. The giant who got Sleipnir upon him was in part of the _Jötnar_ , and 'tis almost certain he who sired Narfi and Vali was one of the _Aesir_. For one of your kind..."

"It's kind of like a fish and a chicken having babies."

Thor seemed to find this statement hilarious. He laughed at some length, then drained his second (or maybe third) bottle of beer, basically in one gulp.

"Do not put Loki aside for this," he said then, suddenly sober. "Do not cast him out, or shun him, I beg of you, for that would surely destroy him. My Lady Jane told me I must not say these words, but I fear that I must, for I love him, and he is all I have left of all my kin, and you, Shield-Brother have filled up his heart until no further room remains within to love another if you quit him."

Tony stared at his prospective brother-in-law, at his golden hair and almost too-handsome face, at those bright blue eyes that had witnessed centuries of death and mayhem and yet looked so fucking young, and so goddamned innocent.

"Thor," he said, squeezing one of the god's massive shoulders, "I never would. Do you get that? I never would. If asked for my opinion, I'd say we'll keep the baby too, but it's Loki's body, so in the end it has to be up to him. This was all a misunderstanding, sure, but that doesn't make it a bad misunderstanding, just a bit of a surprise."

"I ought to have mentioned the possibility," Thor said. He sounded like he might be on the verge of tears, and if there was one thing Tony didn't think he could take, on that particular evening, it was the god of thunder boo-hooing in his living room.

"You didn't think it was a possibility," Tony answered. "Fish and chicken remember?"

That earned him a slightly shaky grin.

"I know your brother's young," he added. "I know this will be super hard on him. But I'll be there. I give my word, Thor. I'll be there. I'll do everything I can to make it work."

Thor clapped his shoulder, making Tony's arm go temporarily numb. "This I believe!" he answered. "This I believe, for you are a good man, and have treated my brother ever with respect and honor, and I shall fight unto death he who claims it is not so."

"Don't think that'll be necessary, buddy, but thank you."

Thor had stood up, all that needed to be said apparently having been said. Tony walked him to the elevator, bade him goodnight (with his best sent to Jane), then leaned against the wall, breathing heavily and wondering if there was any place in the entire universe more thoroughly fucked up than Asgard. What the actual hell was wrong with those people?

He dragged himself up the staircase, shedding clothes as he went, because It wasn't like Kurt had never, ever seen him in boxers and undershirt.

Kurt was now sitting on the end of the bed, the tip of his tail held loosely in Loki's sleepy hand, singing Loki's favorites to him—the songs of The Beatles in German.

Tony paused, trying to be as still, and as quiet, as he could, because there was such warmth in the room, and such love.

Kurt finished his song and glanced up, his yellow eyes meeting Tony's brown ones.

"You're such a mom," Tony told his friend--teasing, but meaning it as a compliment.

"I suppose that I am," Kurt answered, grinning.


	16. Soundwaves and Fury

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki comes to a decision and pays a visit to Dr. Hank McCoy. Not all goes as planned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Volkswagen Beetle (often known in the U.S. as the VW--pronounced "VeeDub"--Bug) has two doors, holds four passengers (debatable, in the older models, unless the ones riding in the backseat are children), and has a rear engine instead of one in the front. Used 70's VW Bugs were a popular car choice for starving students back in my (and Tony's) day, as they were cheap, economical to drive and relatively easy to self-repair.
> 
> Chuck Taylor All-Stars or Converse All-Stars (aka "Converses", "Chuck Taylors",  
> "Chucks", "Cons", and "All Stars") are canvas sneakers with a rubber toe-cap and flat brown sole. They can be either high or low-top, come in myriad colors, last forever and, for extra fun, the canvas upper can be easily painted or otherwise customized.
> 
>  _Howl's Moving Castle_ , based on a book by British author Diana Wynne Jones, was released by Studio Ghibli in 2004. Howl is a wizard, and his house, which ambles about the countryside, has doors that open into different worlds. The Japanese film making company, Studio Ghibli, is known for both the artistic merit and financial success of its animated films.
> 
> Loki appears to have discovered "Reality" TV. The MTV series Teen Mom follows  
> the lives as a group of young women who had children while still in high school, as they continue to make often-questionable life-choices.
> 
> The four GED (General Educational Development) tests measure knowledge of science, mathematics, social studies, reading, and writing. Passing the test gives the equivalent of a high school degree to those who, for one reason or another, have not received a traditional high school diploma at the end of four years of high school education. Although it's sometimes associated with those who've struggled academically, Tony may well have taken the GED in order to skip his last two or three years of high school and enter MIT at age 15.
> 
> Lurch, the single-named manservant to TV's The Addams Family, was originally  
> intended as a nonspeaking part. However, the "You rang?" line, delivered in actor Ted Cassidy's deep, ponderous voice, was such a hit with the audience it became one of the series's best-known catchphrases.
> 
> basso profundo=deep bass (Italian). In music, singers who can perform in the lowest notes of the bass range.
> 
>  _The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales_ is a children's book by Jon Scieszka (author) and Lane Smith (illustrator) published in 1992. Young children LOVE it.
> 
> Hanna-Barbera's _The Magilla Gorilla Show_ ran from 1963-1967 and featured an anthropomorphic gorilla (wearing a bow tie, shorts held up by suspenders, and a tiny derby hat, no less) who languished in the display window of Melvin Peebles's pet shop, gobbling bananas and driving the shop to the brink of financial ruin. To make  
>  matters worse, every time he was sold, he'd end up being returned for a refund,  
> leading to the show's catchphrase, "We'll try again next week."

* * *

By the time he dragged himself out of bed, Tony felt as if he'd bad-dreamed his way through every parenting-related nightmare a modern man could possibly experience. In the last, the one before he decided he might just as well throw in the towel, get up and face whatever the day flung in his direction, he'd absent-mindedly left his baby daughter behind on the subway and had to go chasing down the tracks after the speeding train, all the while pursued by rodents of unusual size. The unusual size being about that of VW Bugs.

To top it off, Loki had, he knew, been with him for most of the night, but wasn't there when he woke.

Slumping on the edge of the big and only-too-empty bed, yawning until his jaw creaked and rubbing his eyes, Tony found himself obsessing about all the stuff Thor had revealed the night before. In the process of turning those stories over and over and over in his head, he discovered— not really to his surprise--that he was furious. Steaming-mad. As in, had he been a cartoon character, his face would have flushed beet-red and actual steam poured out of his ears, while his head whistled like a tea-kettle forgotten on the burner.

None of this rage, it bore mentioning, could in any way, shape or form be taken as directed at Loki--never at Loki--but Tony discovered, almost to his astonishment, that he’d have cheerfully repulsor-blasted to oblivion whatever slimy chickenshit Asgardian fuckwad in Loki’s past had seen fit to first impregnate, then abandon him to his fate. Bad enough if said fuckwad was someone Loki cared about. Worse still if…

Nope. No. Uh-unh, Tony wasn’t going to go there. He wasn’t. His head might actually explode, and that would be hell to get out of the curtains.

Mixed in and around this near-homicidal fury, not too much to his surprise, Tony found something incredibly close to grief, if not actual grief itself, a deep sorrow not only for the fallen god he loved —a big “yes” on that one--but also for the sweet girl who’d made proverbial lemonade out of the extra-sour lemons of a forced marriage meant to shame her and Loki both. The girl who'd stood by Loki as a protector and a true friend, if not a wife in the conventional sense. The girl who’d been willing to suffer and die by Loki’s side. The one girl who, in all their fucked-up, bassackwards, tradition-crazy Asgardian society, actually took the trouble to care. The girl who, even in the wreckage of Loki’s memory, still stood out as someone he’d loved.

Add into this cocktail of disturbing emotions a healthy splash of confusion, as Tony’s life spun in ways he'd never, ever, in a million years expected, throw in another generous dash of fear, that he wouldn't be Sigyn’s equal in courage, wouldn’t manage to man up to this, that he'd fail Loki as a partner, fail their child as a parent, and by the time Tony had showered, shaved, trimmed his beard and dressed, he’d pretty much reduced himself to a quivering wreck.

As if that was, in any way at all, what Loki needed.

At this point the clock read nine-oh-five. Just twenty-five minutes remained until Hank McCoy’s arrival in the infirmary, where they'd both promised to meet him.

Tony felt sick, and not in a sympathetic-morning-sickness kind of way. More in an “all-my-sins-come-back-to-bite-me-in-the-shorts” capacity. Which meant, more or less, there was nothing for him to do except paste a slightly-wobbly smile on his face and go find his fiancé.

He padded down the stairs in stocking feet, carrying his Converse All-Stars, and discovered he didn’t need to search too far afield, considering something much like a Loki-burrito in a fuzzy blanket wrapping currently occupied the entire length of his couch. Every few seconds a hand would emerge from said wrapping, snake into a packet of pre-sliced cheese, remove a slice, roll it into a neat tube and shove it into what (judging by the position of the curls and horns that just barely poked out from the nearer end), had to be Loki’s mouth.

On the TV screen, courtesy of Studio Ghibli, Howl's Moving Castle trundled across the English landscape.

"Baby," Tony said, honestly surprised that his voice came out sounding not only normal, but actually cheerful. "Hi. How are you feeling?"

"I have discovered, by experimentation, that if I eat constantly, mainly of high-protein foods, I will not be sick. I _feel_ sick, but I will not _be_ sick. It's an improvement, I suppose. I am also extremely nervous."

"About the appointment with Hank?"

Loki nodded, then muted his movie and curled up his feet, making a place for Tony to sit.

Tony sat.

Loki immediately reversed position to put his head at the other end, resting on Tony's shoulder, sighing again as Tony wrapped him up tightly in both arms.

Loki smelled, along with his normal, magical scent, vaguely of cheddar.

"All night," Tony told him, "I had the most fucking stupid dreams."

"I dreamt that I exploded, like a watermelon dropped off a building. I once viewed such an event upon the YouTube,” Loki added, before Tony could ask.

"I left our baby girl on the subway, then tried to run after the train. Giant rodents chased me."

Loki let out a brief laugh. "Beloved, what an irresponsible father you are!"

He rolled up another slice of cheese, nibbling it thoughtfully. "When you mention trains…”

Tony studied his face. Loki looked a little pale, though not too bad. He definitely appeared more at peace than he had the previous evening. A long pause followed.

“You were saying?” Tony finally prodded gently.

“My love, what if I am...?" Another pause.

"What if you're what, Lok?"

"A... what do you say... a trainwreck? Like the parents of _Teen Mom_. What if I am useless, inexperienced, selfish, lazy, quick to anger?" Another pause. "Or... oh, what is the word? Tacky."

Tony wanted to laugh, but didn't. Tacky. The gods forbid. "You're expecting to experience a total personality change along with your pregnancy?"

Loki's big green eyes turned up to his, full of pain. That, Tony couldn't--no, _wouldn't_ \--laugh at.

"Babe, did you consider that maybe they choose those clueless kids deliberately, because they _will_ mess up? Because they already have a hundred problems and only one of them is baby? Reality TV isn’t reality, Lok, and even if it was, our situation is pretty different, wouldn't you say? We have zero money concerns, no worries about finishing high school or where we're going to live, no interfering parents—in this Realm, at least--who are pretty much fuck-ups themselves. We don't have to worry about fighting, or hurting each other. We're new, babe, but we're way more solid than those poor, screwed-up children. We have a support group of actual competent adults. And you, my sweet Loki, are no trainwreck."

Loki pressed his face into Tony's chest, murmuring something Tony couldn't make out.

"I didn't quite...?" Tony said.

His fiancé looked up again. "I am damaged, I know,” Loki said, studying Tony’s face with that heartbreakingly earnest expression he’d get now and then. “I understand, also, that I frequently misunderstand, that I am greatly inexperienced, like almost unto a child myself—although I have now completed, without dishonesty or the help of J., the examination of GED, which allows me to claim knowledge equal to the woeful amount usually attained within the high schools of America. I understand, also, that I am also, indeed, very strange by the standards of Midgard, but…”

Tony's mind boggled. Loki had his GED? When he'd been reading for what--about two fucking weeks? Scary-smart didn't begin to cover it. And that was with moth-holes in three-quarters of his brain!

Tony raised both eyebrows, waiting as patiently as he could for the words that would, inevitably follow, knowing that this was no time to interrupt, that Loki had to get this--whatever this might be--out before he lost his nerve.

“I wish to keep her," Loki said softly, his eyes searching Tony’s face, probably for any sign of a negative emotion. "I do wish it, and not, I believe, for any foolish reason, that she should be an adornment to me, or a plaything, something to gain attention unto myself. Rather, I wish to keep her, and be good to her, to teach her and to love her and to want her, as I could not ever have been wanted, given life as I was. If you truly believe that I am capable of this in even the least of ways, despite all that might, in full truth, be said against me, and if our making a child together, raising her together, remains agreeable to you… Let her be, Tony. Please, let her be, and I will try hard as I can to be brave and wise and adult, and not to be selfish, though I can, I know, be selfish, at times."

"Oh, Loki," Tony sighed. “Like I’m not?”

"I will not be cruel, though. I know this.  Also, I will work my hardest to keep her foremost in my mind."

"Baby, I never had a single thought that you wouldn't. I'm more concerned with your health, and how this will affect your recovery. And also—being honest, here, that I myself don't hop on the screw-up express. Kids are a little outside my wheelhouse.”

“Could not many new parents say the same?” Loki’s expression was so sweet, and so full of sheer wanting, Tony had to laugh—a gentle, hopeful laugh—and give him a kiss that was equally gentle and hopeful.

“I’m glad,” he said. “I said it was your decision, and I meant it, Lok, but I’m glad you’re okay with this. Maybe we’re not ready to be parents—but maybe no one ever completely is. At least, just like you said, we’re happy to welcome her into the world. She’ll have parents who love each other, and love her, and--fingers crossed--everything will turn out okay in the end.”

"Fingers..." Loki's brows drew together, which made the paler lines on his forehead go wiggly, like confusion-lines drawn on the forehead of a cartoon character.

Tony gave those lines a kiss to make them smooth again.

"Fingers crossed. It's an expression. A wish for good luck."

That got him a smile--slightly tremulous, but Tony would take it.

"Do you truly believe so? That all, in the end, shall go well? I believe so,” Loki said, in a way that made Tony’s heart officially shatter. “Perhaps we will learn and grow up together.”

Tony laughed again. “Yeah, I guess that pretty much goes for me as well.”

Overhead, J.A.R.V.I.S. did one of his quiet and totally unnecessary throat-clearings.

“You rang?” Tony asked, in his best Lurch the Butler (basso not-very-profundo) voice, giving Loki a grin that finally felt real.

“Is it time, J.?” Loki chimed in, responding, finally, with a genuine smile of his own.

“Dr. McCoy has arrived downstairs,” the A.I. answered, in—mostly for Loki’s benefit, Tony guessed--his most fatherly tones. “My best wishes to you both.”

“Our thanks, dear friend,” Loki answered.

He wandered into the kitchen to toss his empty cheese wrapper, pulled another package from the fridge, and grinned. “Tony, I have now the butterflies of excitement! Will she be comely, do you think?”

“Might be a little soon to tell at this stage, but I know she’ll turn out beautiful, being yours and all.” Tony couldn’t help but grin back at that point—truth be told, he was feeling the presence of more than one or two butterflies of excitement himself.

 

Loki, for reasons he could not have explained, had expected a lecture of sternness from Hank McCoy, but instead Big Blue behaved toward him with great kindness. He drew several tubes of blood, his touch so deft, despite his huge hands, that the stick of the needle scarcely hurt. He kneaded Loki’s back, then his belly, with equal gentleness, bushy brows lifting slightly at the small mound that had already risen out of Loki’s taut flesh.

This concluded, Hank showed, to Loki and Tony both, a past scan, performed during that time Loki no longer remembered, of his womb unoccupied, and along with that a diagram the physician had drawn with his own hand, explaining how this accident—happy as it now seemed —must have occurred.

Except, in the midst of this, Loki found himself weeping, all happiness, all sense of joyful anticipation fled, because he was so very strange inside—so _wrong_ , it seemed--with his secret place that was no passage at all, nothing like the warm, open passage of a woman, but only the narrowest small tube, dry and barren and smaller than a straw for drinking, inexplicable even to Hank’s great powers of explanation, and his large womb with its egg follicles.

Follicles? What, by the names of all the gods, were “follicles?”

Loki wanted badly to ask, but Hank had already moved on within his lecture.

Hank agreed that the male parts of him, Loki's cock and his testicles, were nearly akin to those of Midgardian males, though even those (this, Hank did _not_ say) appeared wrongly made, being too smooth, hairless and tight-skinned, the testicles carried up close to Loki's body. However, it seemed the _Jötunn_ parts of him that caused his doctor and friend the most confusion—not only the womb and the secret place, but the “sperm channel” a short way up inside his back passage. Through that connection, Hank claimed, had Tony’s seed traveled, and thus had Loki fallen pregnant.

Loki burned with shame, as ice burns when held too long in the hand. Were all the _Jötnar_ so? Loki had to wonder. All _ergi_ and ill-made, as he was?

His tears soaked large blotches on the flimsy gown of paper Hank had caused him to be dressed in, and Loki's shame burned deeper still—both that he wept before Tony and Hank, and that he was so freakishly wrong in all of his workings, not _Aes_ or _Jötunn_ or Midgardian.

He was _nothing_ , alike to no one, in ways not merely superficial but special, as Kurt and Hank’s fangs and blue fur were different than the greater part of humankind, yet special, or Kurt’s lovely, warm yellow eyes were special. He had been badly-made indeed in every part, all the way through him. Despite the mound in his belly, he did not even carry his womb there, properly, as a woman carried her womb, but hidden back behind his entrails. What if his baby daughter, already lovely in Loki’s eyes, proved equally ill-made? How could Tony, Midgardian through and through, love either of them?

Loki felt sick with self-repulsion.

Tony, it seemed, understood none of this, and Loki couldn’t think how to explain, either to wise Hank, or to his beloved, that his tears were in fact tears of shame and horror, not the emotionalism of one fallen newly pregnant. How he wished to hide his face from them—no, hide the _whole_ of himself in some dark place, far from allowing Hank to “fire up,” as he said, the machine that would look deep into the utter wrongness of all that lay inside him.

He wanted to leap, to teleport, as Tony would put it, to sidestep through the cloth of the universe, yet knew that he must not.

He must hide this fear, this shame, behind walls high enough, and thick enough, to guard a city, for such was the greatness and might of his ill-feeling.

When Hank asked, “Are you ready, Loki?” he forced a false smile and nodded.

“Yes, Hank,” he answered, in meekness--though he was not truly prepared, not in the least.

Hank turned an instrument of control—a knob, it was called--and at once all Loki’s attention diverted itself from these feelings of self-loathing and went solely towards trying not to scream to the destruction of his lungs and beyond, as the oily wand traveled over his back, his side, beating its thunderous thrum into his ears, seeming to force apart his ribs, and every bone of his spine, his flesh crawling away from the waves of vibration.

In the midst of it all, he felt his child, his tiny, helpless daughter, scream as well, thrashing within him, yet--to his even greater shame--rather than reaching out, calming her, soothing her with loving thoughts, Loki vomited suddenly and intensely and without the least warning, onto himself.

With that he lost all control, thrashing and screaming, fighting sound and vibration both like the wildest of wild creatures.

He couldn’t bear it, he couldn’t bear it, oh, gods, gods no, not another instant!

In the midst of this odorous mess, Hank dropped the wand and attempted to catch hold of him instead, finally clutching Loki’s wrists with too great a tightness as the thrum went on and on and on…

“Oh, for the sake of Pete!” someone said.

Loki couldn't possibly have heard the words, not with his ears, for the noise entirely overwhelmed them--instead the voice sounded within his head. Not loudly, but calmly, comfortingly.

"What in hell are you ass-clowns doing to my Loki?" the voice went on. "I could hear him screaming from the parking garage!"

Just like that, the thrumming ended.

Could the voice possibly have been Clint’s? Clint, who had again become his friend, and not his enemy? Yet why should Clint be here, in the infirmary? Did he remain within the infirmary?

Sparks spat briefly, then all fell silent.

Blissfully silent.

Hank had released his hurting grip, and Clint held him instead, cradling Loki in his powerful arms, rocking him like a child.

"There. There, now," the archer told him, in a softly rumbling voice. "There, you're okay now, aren't you? You're okay."

Across the room, Tony picked himself up from the floor, and Loki knew either he himself, in his mad frenzy, had knocked his beloved there, or Hank had, in trying to contain him. Never had he seen Tony so pale, his eyes wide, mouth a round "O."

"B-babe?" Tony stammered, then blinked. "Clint?" "I have befouled your fine leather coat," Loki told Clint--an observation that seemed important, in that moment, though perhaps it was not.

“Nope, Stinky Cheese Man, doesn’t matter,” the archer told him. “Though I’ll send Mr. Stark, there, the dry cleaning bill if it makes you feel better. You okay now? How are your ears?”

Loki nodded weakly. His ears did still ache, and also boomed dully with the ghost of the terrible noise, but they would mend, he expected.

“It’s like this, Lok…” Clint began, starting to clean Loki up in a slightly rough, yet still kindly, manner. “These two goofballs never meant to hurt you--you know that, right? They can’t hear the machine, so they never once stopped to think that maybe you could. They didn’t have a clue about how it fucked with your head, or the way it crawled through your skin, because you didn’t let them. Right? You didn’t let them?”

Loki gave a long, shuddering sigh. “I would not be weak.”

“You crazy kid.” Clint wiped Loki’s face, briskly but effectively, with yet another handful of tissues. “Y’know, when something’s torture to you, you're kinda allowed to say?”

“I’d much rather you did, Loki.” Poor Hank sounded nearly as shaken as Loki himself. “I’d truly no idea…”

“Well, we’re not doing that again,” Tony put in. “Not ever. No way, no how. Even if she has three heads, they're not going through that. Ever.” He reached out, his hand alighting briefly, almost timidly, on Loki's shoulder.

 _Now he has seen me,_ Loki thought. _Now he has seen what I am. What I truly am._

“I would shower,” Loki mumbled, in great part because he felt so unclean without, in his person-- but also unclean within, unbearably ashamed, whatever kind words the others spoke to him. “I am well now. I am well.” He din’t truly feel well. His head spun, and his left wrist ached badly. Nonetheless, he tried to sit.

"Hold your horses there, Stinky," Clint told him, exerting a gentle pressure on Loki's shoulder to keep him prone. He then snapped his fingers rapidly, three times, in front of Tony's nose.

Tony blinked.

The archer's voice, when he spoke again, could not have been kinder. "And you, Father of the Year... Saddle up and get ready to ride because, take it from me, this is where things just start to get interesting. Being a dad takes guts, and you're going to show some. You know you have it in you."

Tony took in a large, shuddering breath, and Loki felt chilled and lightheaded with fear--that Tony truly had seen what Hank showed them, in all its parts and meanings, that he had understood beyond all understanding, and been revolted. That this one hour would see them severed forever, never to be joined again.

Then, suddenly, Tony laughed. "Jesus, Earth to Stark, where was I? That wallop Magilla Gorilla here gave me must have rattled my circuits."

"Naturally, blame the doctor," Hank grumbled, but his words held no real ire.

"I will, if the doctor flings me halfway across the fucking tower," Tony answered, joking, Loki thought, just as Hank did, to lighten that which had gone before, placing no blame, making no mention of the machine and its terrible noise.

How could they have known, when he'd taken such pains to hide from them?

 _Listen, kiddo,_ Clint said within Loki's head _. Listen to your own smarter self. Listen to your little girl. Hear how she's gone peaceful again?_

Loki sent his thoughts inward, and found that it was so, that the stillness he'd felt in her was a contented stillness. The stillness of peaceful sleep.

How new her mind was! Not yet capable of thought, or complex feeling, yet so filled with fiery wonder, hotter than a red-glowing ember on the fire, now that the pain had gone--yet not an ember that would burn him.

 _Now, you might just want to ask yourself,_ Clint said to him, _How could someone who made something so good, so perfect, not be good too? Let her feel that, kiddo--how much you love her, how wonderful she is. Not that other shit. You're her whole world, Loki, for right now. Let that world be a good world? Okay?_

"Okay," Loki whispered, knowing still, however softly he spoke, that Clint, his friend, heard him.


	17. Some Enchanted Evening

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little domestic Phlint, including a bit of background. Tony and Loki continue to work on their issues.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Both the chapter title and Clint's lyrics are from the song of the same name, a tune from the 1949 Rogers and Hammerstein musical _South Pacific._
> 
>  _Huevos rancheros_ ("rancher's eggs") is a breakfast dish of fried eggs served on fried corn tortillas and topped with tomato-chili sauce, refried beans, Mexican-style rice, and either avocado or guacamole. A Denver omelet usually contains diced ham, onions and green bell peppers.
> 
> "Dad Fu," in this case, means the particular skill that comes from being experienced in the ways of fatherhood.
> 
> "I've been slimed!" whined Dr. Peter Venkman (Bill Murray) in the 1984 film  
>  _Ghostbusters_. Clint is perfectly correct--such is parenthood. Hopefully minus the whining.
> 
> Symkaria is the fictional Eastern European country located next to Dr. Doom's Latveria. Lucky them. Kyoto is an actual city more or less in the center of the island of Honshu, Japan. The equally real Republic of Uzbekistan is a country in Central Asia.
> 
> The phrase "ladies and germs" as opposed to the more traditional "ladies and gentlemen" is said to have been coined by "Uncle Miltie" (aka, American comedian Milton Berle, 1908-2002), the first major television star.
> 
> Although there are several older related versions, the proverb Clint semi-quotes, "If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride," first appeared in its modern form in James Kelly's _Scottish Proverbs, Collected and Arranged_ in 1721.
> 
> The proverb Loki quotes ("If at first you don't succeed...") can be traced back to  
> Thomas H. Palmer (in his _Teacher's Manual_ , circa 1840).
> 
> It's said that Leopold Stravinsky would tell the orchestra, "Once more, with feeling," after leading them through a piece.

* * *

“Huevos Rancheros or Denver omelets?” Phil called from the kitchen the minute Clint walked in the front door. “Or, we could still go out, if you’d rather.”

“Huevos Rancheros are good,” Clint called back, though food, at that particular moment in time, wasn't exactly something he wanted to think about too hard. At least Phil hadn't suggested something super cheesy.

Phil’s giant dog gave him a sniff, a look of horror, and clickety-clacked a rapid retreat back to the kitchen and the safety of her tidy and much-better-smelling master’s side. Clint didn’t blame her—it couldn't be denied, he really and truly reeked.

Forget the dry cleaners, Clint decided—Stark could buy him a whole new coat, because A) he was a billionaire, and, B) this one would never, ever, not after a million cleanings possibly be right again.

He stripped off the poor insulted garment, shoved it in a trash bag and crossed the hallway. One clank of the metal door and his late, lamented jacket was journeying down the incinerator chute, on its way to a quiet and decent cremation.

At least he’d gotten off easy, not like Hank McCoy. Poor guy would probably need a gallon (or two) of shampoo to get all that crazy fur of his bearable again. Besides which, it had to be noted that, for a doctor, Hank didn’t seem all that down with the whole, “ _I’ve been slimed_!" experience.

Clint, on the other hand, could call on his Dad Fu (since he was, in fact, the only one, the only parent, out of all the Avengers, it suddenly hit him) which rendered him more or less impervious to the Yuck Factor. Slime, of one type or another, kind of went with the territory. As in, you had to toughen up, or else.

The thing was, though, thinking about being a father, thinking about his children, had a tendency to snap him straight out of Clint Barton, Avenger and super-cool Secret Agent mode, dropping him straight into the, “ _Oh, woe is me, I miss my babies!_ " zone.

That wasn’t a lie on any level. Clint _did_ miss them. He _always_ missed them, every second out of every day that went by. Only there was the job, always the job, the sudden absences and the general, non-stop, instability of his life.

He’d wanted Laura to keep the kids, to be the custodial parent, because Laura’s life, her job, the farm where they lived (where Clint had lived too, once upon a time, when he wasn’t jetting off at a moment’s notice to Symkaria, or Kyoto, or Uzbekistan) was a marvel of security and stability, regular and predictable as the movements of the planets. The kids needed to live that kind of normal, ordinary existence, sheltered inside Laura’s orbit, and what Clint needed…

What Clint needed, by his own choice, didn’t enter into it. Arrangements, and the kids’ lives, had to be what they had to be, and so it had been even when he and Laura were still joined in bonds of Holy Matrimony.

Clint, as a rule, considered herself an expert on compartmentalization. You took that thought, that feeling, and kept it safe in a mental box until a more convenient time arrived. Pining for his kids when he had a day off, and Phil had a day off, and they’d penciled in (barring the kind of unforeseen circumstances that seemed to hit only too frequently) a little actual daylight-hours  
together time, well… how did that do anyone any good?

The fact remained, though, together time or not, Clint missed his kids, on this occasion with a sudden sharp pang of longing, the grown-up brother of the vaguer and more generalized missing he carried with him every single minute of every single day.  
Each time Clint saw them, he’d swear that Cooper and Lila had shot up another six inches, and they were turning quickly from kids who regarded him as all-wise, all-knowing, and probably ten feet tall, into, well… people, with preferences and dislikes and opinions, so many opinions. He felt himself shrinking in their eyes, turning from that larger-than-life hero into the ordinary schmuck he really was.

And that, ladies and germs, was nothing short of humbling.

Sometimes Clint wondered if his children had somehow managed to stumble their way into a closely-connected parallel dimension, one where the clocks raced ahead at a hundred times the speed of the ordinary, plodding minutes and hours that ruled Clint’s own world, transforming his sweet, small, innocent kids into a self-reliant young man, a decisive young woman, these sudden tall changelings occupying the places where his babies once had been.

Clint wished, sometimes, that he still lived there on the farm, that he’d somehow managed to suppress, and switch off, and just suck up all his own needs and desires, the way dear old dad had taught him back in the day, because Harold Barton would be double-goddamned if he would have a _sissy_ for a son.

He both wished, and didn’t wish, that he’d been able to hold that part of himself down, that part that could fall so hard, like a big, dumb bag of rocks for Phil, and hadn’t been able to unfall.

He'd never cheated, not with his body--he wasn't that kind of guy--but his mind proved to be an entirely different matter.

And Laura, blessed St. Laura, when he’d finally confessed his sins of thought, if not deed, had just smiled, calm and together as always, kissed his forehead tenderly, and told Clint, “First I suspected, then I knew, and it’s all right, honey, it’s all right. You did the best you could.”

Clint, on the other hand, who wasn’t the one being hurt, had cried buckets, and clung to her, begging for forgiveness she’d already freely given, while Laura held him, and said soft, soothing things that nonetheless showed she was strong as the whole world.

And so it went. They struck a balance between his life and her life and the kids’ needs, but Clint still longed for the time when he’d been there every morning he could manage, to get them up, feed them breakfast, walk them down the lane to the bus, and every night (again, whenever possible), to tuck them snugly into bed. He longed to have those times back again, he truly did, but some things couldn’t ever be. Not now, not ever.

Wishes weren't horses, were they? Wishes wouldn't ever be horses.

Not ever again.

Clint leaned against the corridor wall, shutting his eyes, engulfed for a minute in what had been and, then, what was now, all his emotions apparently set on the spin cycle, whipping around inside his head in a way that seemed impossible to sort out, or otherwise control. With Loki, just now, he’d acted on impulse, on pure gut feeling, which Clint actually did more often than he’d  
like to admit.

Maybe that was what made him and Nat such a good team—that though empathetic, she never failed to also be so rational, while he was a creature, almost always, of instinct.

Clint wished that he could talk to Natasha at this very moment, and have her somehow sort out the universe of conflict, emotion, sadness, even tenderness, currently whirling around in his head, because the former god, the former enemy, the former adversary, sick and terrified and screaming in agony, hadn’t stirred in him feelings of, “ _well, you finally got yours_ ,” or righteous glee, or a sanctimonious, “ _the punishment is just_ ,” he’d made Clint feel the way he’d feel if Cooper or Lila  
were hurting.

He felt—god help him—fatherly and protective.

He’d sensed, with Kurt Wagner absent, that McCoy and Tony were in deep, deep over their heads, And he’d dived straight into the vast and tumultuous Ocean of Loki, as if he hadn’t had another choice.

Only he had. He could have ignored the whole shebang. Except he hadn’t _wanted_ to ignore it.

Clint groaned. Since when did he feel all fatherly about the god of fucking lies and mischief? He guessed since the moment that Asgardian goat-fucker, Loki’s so-called father, had been drop-kicked out of his head, and he’d been able to see clearly again.

Now Clint wished he could talk to Cap, really talk to him, and have Steve really hear him. He wished he could make their fearless leader understand that this time he had things all wrong, that the villain, the Big Bad, he thought he understood had never been, only a troubled young (relatively speaking) man who’d wanted to be seen as a contender, as worthy, like his brother, and been tortured, controlled, used.

That even that young man, the Loki-who-had-been, no longer existed, not any more. That the Loki left behind was only a sweet, lost, vulnerable, hopeful kid with giant holes in his brain, about as bent on world domination as a kitten. That if he was dangerous at all (and Clint wasn’t an idiot, he could see that Loki had magic—almost literally—oozing out his fingertips), he’d only be dangerous to anyone who threatened the strange little family he’d built for himself here on earth.

Clint, it had to be admitted, considered himself part of that family. God help him and Loki both.

“Clint?” Phil’s voice, as always, was smooth, soothing, eternally calm. Clint guessed, though, that if he looked, three long-if-shallow creases would be marking his forehead, the only sign Phil ever showed of worrying.

He opened his eyes.

Yup, there was Phil, also, always, of the good instincts, in the apartment doorway, sleeves rolled up (he _would_ wear a buttondown shirt, even with jeans), along with the “Kiss the Cook” apron Clint had given him for his birthday.

He and Phil had skirted around the issue, calling each other boyfriends (even though that sounded a little stupid between two grown-ass, not to mention middle-aged men), not partners, being careful about saying the “L” word—only it hit Clint then, in the exact minute, that he _did_ love Phil.

That he’d always loved Phil, even from the first, in that giddy, throw-caution-to-the-winds, “ _Some Enchanted Evening”_ sense (even though their first meeting had occurred at a butt-numbingly boring briefing, conducted to the tune of Nick Fury’s rants, which somehow served to make it no less romantic). Clint had seen that face, that placid, unremarkable face, and he’d known beyond doubting that Phil would be, in that moment and after, his partner, his rock, his safe place, his port in a storm.

  
_"Who can explain it?"_ Clint thought.

 _Who can tell you why?_  
_Fools give you reasons,_  
_Wise men never try._

"I love you, Philly,” he found himself blurting out, the lyrics echoing in his head.

 _Once you have found him,_  
_Never let him go._  
_Once you have found him,_  
_Never let him go!_

Phil smiled that funny little quirky smile of his, the one that was more in the eyes than in the lips.

“I know,” he said, which as any _Star Wars_ fan could tell you meant the exact same thing, only cooler. “Why don’t you go wash up, honey?”

By which Phil meant, _go fumigate yourself, please, you smell of nauseated god_.

“Brunch will be ready by the time you’re finished,” Phil added, with another smile.

“Okay. Thanks,” Clint answered—which sounded lame, but Phil would understand that he meant.

For everything. For giving him stability. For making a home for him. For being a thought to cling to, such a short time before, when he’d been so close to doing a Very Bad Thing.

Phil smiled yet again. He stopped halfway into turning back into the apartment. “I’ll talk to Steve,” he said. “He needs to understand that he’s misconstrued the situation.”

“Would you?”

“Of course.” Phil smiled again. “Anything for you, Clint. Anything.”

* * *

It hadn’t escaped Tony’s notice that Loki didn't say much once they’d left the infirmary. He didn’t seem too distraught, all things considered—not meltdown-level distraught, anyway--but then, he wasn’t exactly all smiles, either. Add to that his pointed request for private time in the bathroom as he showered, and Tony, despite his ace mathematical skills, couldn’t quite add up what it all meant.

Maybe he wasn’t _that_ kind of math whiz, in the same way Bruce wasn’t “ _that kind of doctor_.”

Tony paced a bit, then actually tried to call Bruce, who at the very least understood human (if not Asgardian-slash- _Jötunn_ ) emotion better than he did, but got his ScienceBro’s voicemail.

Ditto for Kurt, who, as Tony belatedly recalled, had some sort of practical exam scheduled for today, and was most likely wrist-deep in cadaver.

Poor Kurt. If he’d been able to hear Loki screaming ( _screaming_ , for the gods’ sakes!), he must have been going crazy.

“Our boy’s okay,” he told the recorder, surprised by the shaky sound of his own voice. “Big no on future ultrasounds, though. They hurt him, Kurt, and… No, I’m not going to do this by message. I just wish I had your secret Loki decoder ring. Call me, or bamf home when you can, or something? Pretty please?”

So there he was, trying like a loser to lean on Kurt again. Add that in to the equation. Also add (and Tony so wasn’t proud of this one), he’d let Loki be tortured and hadn’t heard him cry out, not the least teeny bit. No, it took Clint—fucking _Clint!_ —to hear him and help.

Tony collapsed, head in hands, on the edge of the bed. What in hell was up with that? Why hadn’t Loki trusted him? Why? Was it because he and Hank had made a big deal about the ultrasound, telling him, “This is what’s done. This is the Midgardian way?”

Not that either of them actually said “Midgardian.”

Goddammit. Tony flopped backwards onto the excellent new mattress. Goddammit. Goddammit. And, for a change, goddammit. He still couldn’t hear Loki. He wasn’t like Kurt, empathetic and kind and wise. Pathetic, maybe, but certainly not _empathetic_. He so wasn’t equipped for this.

Maybe it was a case of his birds coming home to roost. Or his chickens. Whatever it was that roosted. He’d made such a giant thing about thoughts being private, about Loki staying out of other people’s heads, including his. Well, he’d gotten his fucking selfish wish on that one, hadn’t he?

Never mind that being in other people’s heads was a huge part of how Loki understood the world. That it was how he and Kurt had become so close, so fast, how Loki got his words back, how Loki’d saved Darius King’s fucking life. Telling Loki not to share thoughts equaled telling another guy not to make eye-contact. To stay out of his personal space. It was bossy. It was, at the very least, insensitive.

Tony groaned. How could he keep being such a jerk to someone he loved so much?

“Don’t, as it is said, beat yourself up,” Loki told him quietly, from the doorway. “The fault is mine as much as yours.”

“But beating myself up is what I do best!” Tony joked—which would probably have been funnier if it hadn't been so true.

“I require to cuddle,” Loki informed him and, just like that, stretched his tall, blue, naked self out beside Tony on the bed. A second later, he raised his head from Tony’s shoulder. “If that is acceptable?”

“Always. Always acceptable,” Tony answered. “Come to think of it, I believe I require to cuddle too.” He pulled his fiancé even closer, breathing in the fragrances of Loki-scent and coconut, which blended together surprisingly well. “Hell of a day, huh, babe?”

Loki made a non-committal humming sound.

“I was being ironic.”

“So I ascertained,” Loki answered, shivering a little as Tony’s fingertips traveled lightly over his ribs, his waist, his hip. “Tony, I…”

“What is it, my exquisite Loki?”

“That… When you say those words… Are they meant also as irony?”

“What?” The word came out way too harsh, much harsher than Tony intended, because in that instant it hit him, like the proverbial ton of bricks dropping directly onto his head: this was it, the explanation for Loki’s bruised, distracted, tragic look, the reason why he’d seemed so distant.

“No, no, oh, my baby, I didn’t mean that the way it sounded, you just surprised me, and then I realized—I think—what you’ve been going through in your head. Please don’t think those things about yourself. Please don’t. Different is only different, not bad. Never bad. I didn’t love you because you’re a guy, the same as any other guy. I loved you—I _do_ love you—because you’re  
Loki.”

“Even as I am.” Loki spoke the words flatly, almost bitterly.

“ _Especially_ as you are. I happen to like your anatomy, inside and out. I like you, inside and out. Just look into my head if you don’t believe me."

Loki actually looked. Tony felt him do it—a gentle, cautious touch, as if Loki was handling a baby bird. It also tickled ever-so-slightly.

“So?” he asked, when the tickling finally stopped, but Loki still hadn’t said anything for ages.

“I find…” Loki began, then stopped himself. “You appear to be sincere.”

“That would be because I am. Sincere, I mean.”

“Then, if in truth you are sincere in your admiration of me, and I, likewise, am sincere in my admiration for you, you must make a pact with me, Tony.”

Tony frowned—not because he suspected his fiancé of anything sneaky, but because he couldn’t guess where Loki was heading with his talk of pacts. Knowing Loki, it could have been literally anywhere.

Loki raised up a bit, tracing the lines of Tony’s beard with his fingertips the way he sometimes liked to do, his green eyes reddened, but so kind it made Tony blush a little—that anyone would look at him with that much tenderness, that much generosity of spirit. That anyone would show him, so honestly and openly, how much he was loved.

That expression of Loki’s, that deep, focused sweetness, made Tony want to protest that it wasn’t right, he didn’t deserve it.

The exact same way Loki always would.

Tony laughed suddenly. They were two of a kind, that was for sure.

“Shoot, Lok,” he said, “But I bet I can guess what you’re going to ask me.”

"Only this,” Loki answered, “When you look at yourself, see only with my eyes, because in those eyes you rise above reproach. In return, I shall endeavor to do likewise.”

“If I promise, you do too.”

Loki’s pressed his lips, sweet and gentle as always, to Tony’s lips. “I swear, at the very least, to try.”

“Same for me,” Tony told him. “I mean, we’re both swimming upstream against a lifetime of negative conditioning, but if I try, and you try, and we keep trying…”

“As in the ‘If at first’ aphorism.”

“Say what?” Tony blinked at him in pure confusion.

“’If at first you don’t succeed,’” Loki quoted, “’Try, try, try again.’ We’re meant to take from that, I believe, that with repeated trials must come eventual success.”

“We can hope, right?” Tony said. “Do you think nine months is long enough for us to get all emotionally healthy, and bursting with self-acceptance, and be the coolest, most together parents ever?”

“Or longer.” Loki ran his fingers over his tiny blue baby bump. “Or so Thor says. Midgardian gestation time is nine months. I may be different. Twice a thousand things may be different.” He threw the shortest possible glance in Tony’s direction, timid as some woodland creature, like a deer peering out from behind a tree, ready to flee at a second’s notice.

Tony put his hand over Loki’s hand, over satiny skin and the slight, almost nonexistent rise of his belly.

“Remember, you’re seeing with my eyes, babe, and everything they see is beautiful and good and right. There’s no wrongness, no shame, just everything being what it needs to be. Okay?”

“Okay,” Loki answered softly.

“Once more with feeling, maybe?”

“Okay,” Loki told him, with a little more strength. “Everything is good. Everything will be okay.”

He lay quiet for a long while in Tony’s arms. “But never any more machines? It was truly a terrible machine, beloved. The worst of machines.”

“Never any more machines. Ever. Except by your express request. I never meant to hurt you, Lok. I’ll do my level best to never hurt you again.”

“This I know.” Loki’s voice had started to sound sleepy. Slowly, his muscles had begun to relax, and Tony felt himself relaxing too, drifting, hovering almost on the edge of sleep, falling, at last, into dreams in which a tiny mermaid girl, white as White Loki, her long black hair drifting, sang to him of life and death, love and pain, until Tony believed if he could just hold onto her words and remember, he’d know every part of the universe that had been, or was, or would ever be.


	18. Two Meetings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki enjoys a meeting in Mr. Tobit's office, but later a less welcome visitor is found skulking near his school.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A "Brown Betty" is a rounded English teapot with a "Rockingham Glaze" (a brown manganese glaze that's brushed on, then allowed to run down the sides, resulting in a streaky finish after firing). Some say the secret of the Brown Betty is that the clay used to make the pots hold the water at a perfect temperature, others that the shape allows tea leaves to swirl in a way the provides full flavor without bitterness.
> 
> The sorceress Medea, of Greek mythology fame, helped the hero Jason outwit her father, King Aeëtes of Colchis. She left her homeland with him, and soon after became Jason's wife. Euripides's tragedy _Medea_ , tells how Jason betrays Medea, abandoning her in order to marry the daughter of King Creon of Corinth. To avenge this infidelity, Medea punishes her husband by killing their children.
> 
> Huginn and Muninn are Odin's ravens, his eyes and ears in the Nine Realms. Their names mean "thought" and "memory."
> 
> Gyros can be thought of as the Greek version of the hamburger. The meat  
> (any kind can be used, though IMHO, lamb tastes best) is seasoned a and cooked for a long time on a vertical spit until it is tender and delicious, then served wrapped in flatbread with tomato, onion, and tzatziki (yogurt, cucumber and dill) sauce.
> 
> "I am a stranger and a sojourner with you." - _Genesis_ 23:4, KJV
> 
> “The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose." - _The Merchant of Venice_ , W. Shakespeare, Act 1, Scene 3
> 
> More Shakespeare! In _The Tempest_ , the sprite Ariel is imprisoned for twelve years inside a "cloven pine" by the witch Sycorax. Prospero the Enchanter releases him in return for his service.

* * *

Loki found Mr. Tobit in his office, sitting in his creaking old chair (of which he nonetheless seemed inordinately fond), and staring out through the frost-edged window. He glanced at his teacher’s thoughts, just to see if he was sad or otherwise distressed and, if that was the case, whether he might quickly make efforts to cheer him, but found only ponderings of Mr. Tobit’s younger days, traveling through an old and beautiful city with which Loki was not familiar.

“Where is it?” he asked. “”The city you thought of—its streets are unknown to me, yet they are surpassingly lovely.”

Mr. Tobit startled badly at the sound of his voice, but once he’d got over the shock of being creptup upon (Loki vowed, in future, to make more noise in his approaches), he smiled almost at once.

“Loki, dear boy, you read my day-dreams? Why am I not surprised by this? One would think I might be."

Loki smiled in return, glad to see that his teacher had, apparently, been offended neither by the intrusions into his office nor into his waking dreams.

"I scarcely expected you today," Mr. Tobit continued. "How are you feeling? Would you care for tea?”

“I always care for tea,” Loki answered, “And I have brought biscuits—or, not exactly biscuits, for Kurt calls them ‘breakfast bars,’ yet they are extremely tasty to eat, though also healthy. I helped to make them.” He cleared a small stack of clutter from the second of the comfortable chairs and sat, setting the plastic box of bars on the nearby table.

“Oh! I have forgotten to ask if I have invaded your privacy by arriving so early. There’s a matter about which I wished to speak, and also I have also brought you a small gift, almost nothing, though I hope that you will like it anyway.”

Smiling still, in a way that entirely lighted his round, lined face, Mr. Tobit plugged in the kettle. He then measured leaves into the teapot, which was of the earth-colored and ordinary sort called a “Brown Betty,” which his teacher claimed, despite its plainness, made the finest brew. Indeed, either this was true, or Mr. Tobit possessed better tea-making skills than Kurt did, for his kind teacher’s tea always seemed superior in every way.

Loki would never have mentioned this to Kurt, not wishing to insult his beloved friend in even the slightest respect.

While the tea steeped, Mr. Tobit took his own chair again, spending some moments after in study of Loki’s. “Are you certain you’re quite well, dear boy? You look pale.”

“First, your gift?” Loki suggested.

All the way over to Brooklyn, riding beside Tony’s driver in one of Tony’s long, black cars (for Tony would not hear of him, now, making his own way upon the underground trains, no matter how much Loki wished not to be a trouble) he’d felt horribly nervous, fearful that that he’d been presumptuous, that Mr. Tobit would not enjoy the small watercolor painting he’d done of Miss Eugenia Tobit from memory, recalling the way she’d looked when speaking in the language of the German people with Kurt.

Loki had liked the painting at first, but now he feared his work might not be skillful enough for his teacher’s taste, that the strokes of his brush were clumsy, that he might not have executed his lessons successfully. Worst of all, that Mr. Tobit might say he enjoyed the portrait when he did not, actually, merely out of politeness.

However, when he glanced up, stomach once more filled with the _verdammt_ butterflies (“ _verdammt_ ” being a curse-word of Kurt’s, which Loki particularly liked), he saw his teacher held the white tissue in which he'd wrapped the painting crumpled up in one hand, the little portrait in the other, and that tears stood in his eyes.

Loki’s heart plummeted.

Mr. Tobit appeared to read the distress in his face at once. “Oh, Loki, Loki, on no, my dear. It is the most wonderful thing, truly the most wonderful gift! It is so purely Eugenia, both as she is now, and…” His voice broke. “And as she was when we were children, and had no one else in all the world who loved us.”

Loki hadn’t the least idea what to say to this, and the idea of Mr. Tobit, and Miss Tobit--both so kind and wholly good--growing up unloved struck him as so bitterly wrong that all he could think to do was enfold his teacher in his arms and hold him, which perhaps was not appropriate, yet felt so.

In holding Mr. Tobit, Loki felt also that his teacher truly did love his gift, perhaps beyond his power in words to express, that it had touched deep into the heart of his own kindness and goodness and caring, and that he not merely appreciated, but truly loved Loki for the giving of it.

After some time they parted, both slightly abashed. Mr. Tobit poured the tea, and added milk in. They nibbled in companionable silence upon Kurt’s breakfast bars, which looked as if they ought not to taste wonderful, yet did.

“Because love is the secret ingredient,” Tony had quipped, in a humorous voice—but perhaps that was indeed the secret of their flavor, that Kurt in his caring had put into them things that tasted good to Loki, and would also nourish his body.

“Now, Loki,” Mr. Tobit began, after they were refreshed. “What is it you wanted to tell me?”

“It is very difficult…” Having started, Loki had no idea how to continue. “You had thought, the other day, that I was ill with the sickness of brief-but-violent-purging, as often comes in winter months--when indeed I was not. You know also that I am not… That I have…”

Mr. Tobit gave a nod of encouragement.

“Parts.” Loki added. Glancing down at his hands, he saw his fingers twisting nervously together. He wished to stop them from the motion, which he knew others often found off-putting, yet found himself unable.

“Parts?” Mr. Tobit asked, in a mild tone, brows slightly raised. 

“Which is to say… I had forgotten, and I suppose Thor, my brother, had forgotten also to mention to me, though he knew… Of my two parents, one of them was like me, blue like me, marked like me, and… with parts. Like mine. He bore me within him, and I am wrong like him, ill-made like him, though that is also a wrong thing to say, now, as I have vowed to see myself with Tony’s eyes, through the lens of his love for me, not as misshapen, merely as myself. Merely as Loki. But, oh gods I make no sense, and I do not know how to explain it!”

“Loki,” Mr. Tobit said gently. “Tony is quite correct. You are not ill-made. You are a beautiful boy.”

Loki could not answer, only shook his head violently. He did not feel beautiful. He never felt beautiful, even in those moments when he tried his hardest to view himself through the filter of Tony's sight.

Kurt told him his self-disgust was no real thing, but only the lingering poison of the creature that had lived, so dreadfully and destructively, within his head, that the opinions of the hateful should be taken only as that--opinions, bias, ignorance. That Loki should not allow such baseless, careless thoughts to niggle their way into his heart, delivering a hundred small, cruel wounds in a day.

How could he not, though? How could he not, when nearly every moment of every day he swam through an stinging sea of words: freak, degenerate, mutie, monster, devil, criminal, psychopath, killer, liar, thief...

Crazy as a bag of cats...

Loki wasn't even entirely certain how crazy that was meant to be. It must surely be bad, though, if thought of him.

How could he _ever_ see loveliness in himself, even for the sake of his most-lovely little daughter, when those words were his true reflection, every disgusted face he saw, his mirror?

Mr. Tobit gave a warm and quiet laugh, not mocking in the least, meaning only to show sympathy, and rattling Loki out of his thoughts. “I must say, it seems rather forgetful of your brother not to mention, at least in passing, that you were able to bear children. That is what you’re telling me, yes? Has this happened before, Loki?”

“I forgot them,” he answered, almost sick, by now, with self-hate. “How could I forget my dearly-loved boys?”

How could he? How could he have been so careless as to allow those memories to be eaten away? Why had he lacked the strength to prevent something so entirely precious to be stolen without his knowing?

"It’s not a lack on your part I would think, my dear, only another random cruelty of your injuries,” Mr. Tobit told him gently. "We all are struck with losses we'd wish with all our hearts to prevent, yet..." His shoulders lifted, signaling defeat.

“So Tony and Kurt tell me." Loki's throat ached, and felt too tight even to swallow Mr. Tobit's excellent tea, but he would not allow himself to weep. He would not. He would not be so entirely _ergi_.

“Then, they are wise in doing so. Are you happy, Loki?”

Happy? Surprised by the question, Loki nearly laughed.

Seriously? Tony might have said in his position. Seriously?

Only then he thought of his small one, his beautiful daughter, warm and alive within him, kept safe inside his body, and found himself nodding instead.

"I understand so little, despite all my years," Mr. Tobit told him, a touch wistfully, "And yet I know it can't be easy. So many are small-minded. So many criticize, and judge, congratulating themselves on their rightness when indeed they know so little. They seem determined to make what's already difficult in life more difficult still. Try to rise above them if you can, dear boy. For  
your own sake? And your child's?"

"I see her in my mind's eye," Loki confessed. "I think of her—for she is a daughter, the first of my bearing--my small one within me, and there is joy. Fear and self-doubt, yes—and also, frequently, intense nausea, still, at this time--but mostly joy in her. I hope, in time, my joy in her will overwhelm all other feelings.”

“Yes, I see it is hard." Mr. Tobit studied him, frowning a little--though in sympathy, not disapproval. "Does Tony support you? She is Tony’s daughter, is she not? You’re in agreement?”

“Yes, Tony appears pleased.”

Gazing back at Mr. Tobit’s creased and kindly-smiling face, Loki experienced a sudden and altogether unexpected sense of peace, so unfamiliar to him he came close, once more, to flooding the office with his weeping, like Alice in Wonderland after she'd consumed the enchanted "Eat Me" cake which made her grow immense.

Perhaps a little of Tony and Kurt's wisdom had at last sunk in, or perhaps it was that this man, who Loki had already come to like and respect so greatly, felt no doubt in him, no disgust, only concern for his well-being.

No one he cared for, it struck him, had so far felt disgusted. Surprised, perhaps, but was not surprise an expected emotion in such a case? He himself had felt much the same. Why should he accuse himself of things beyond his control? Why should he feel so afraid?

"Ah, there's my brave lad," murmured his teacher, reaching out to pat Loki's knee.

They sat and drank their tea together, and ate, until the pot was emptied and the level of the bars in their plastic box greatly reduced (Loki having eaten the lion’s share of them—his daughter, for being so small, seemed to require much feeding). Mr. Tobit described to him the beautiful cities of Italy, until all the world felt beautiful around him, and calm, all Loki’s anxieties (during that blessed time, at least), seeming entirely without substance or merit.

* * *

"You make a fantastic teacher Loki," Athena told him, as she pulled on her gloves and wound her crimson scarf round her neck. Merely standing in the doorway to the former depot, still inside its closed double doors, made Loki shiver, and he wished he'd worn his warm coat instead of his more attractive leather jacket.

Tony had warned him, also.

"Seriously, like you could do it for a job," his friend went on. "Have you ever thought of that?"

"I have a job," Loki answered. The barest thought of the subject made him feel disloyal, especially as he had not enjoyed working within the Department of Design, where his supervisor had been kind to him, his fellow-workers immensely less so.

"With Tony."

"Yeah, but is that what you want, or what Tony wants you to do? I get the whole 'family business' thing, and I'm aware that it's what you came here to do, but your art is so good, honey, and you have such a talent for teaching, I just thought..."

“Athena,” Loki said, keeping his voice low, trying not to let on how her words disturbed him. He had pledged himself to Tony, and must work for their common good. Also, after two hours helping Mr. Tobit to teach skill in drawing, he felt drained. He had loved the occupation, and yet he felt used up. He only wanted, now, to sit in a warm restaurant with his friend, just as they'd  
planned, turn the better part of his overactive mind off for a time, and eat. His stomach ached with hunger, and a dull throb of headache had set in just at the place where Darius's head had hit his brow.

They stepped out of the former depot's shelter, through the lesser shelter of the portico beyond, and down the shallow steps, the north wind striking like a sudden, stinging slap to the face.

Athena snugged her woolly hat further down around her ears. "I know, I know. I look like an unholy cross between Medea and a Christmas elf. It's just so damn cold! Do you think it'll snow tonight? I think it will snow."

"I enjoy snow," Loki answered. "Or will, once we reach our homes."

"Ain't that the truth!" his friend exclaimed--which was not actually poor grammar on her part, Loki had learned, but a common colloquial phrase which Midgardian-Americans often used.

"Athena..."

"Hmm?" she replied, shoulders hunching against the wind.

“If I was to tell you…” Again, just as with Mr. Tobit, Loki could not think how to proceed, and it may have been that he might have waited, for they planned to enjoy a leisurely lunch together, and then perhaps to visit Athena’s studio, where she worked most often with metals and clays and small things randomly located in diverse places, which she named, “found objects,” making wondrous creations from bits and pieces others dismissed as useless and without worth.

That was among the things Loki liked best about his recent friend—not only her kind and generous nature, and her abundant good humor, but that she knew such love for that which was unwanted by anyone else.

“Tell me what, Lok?” Athena reached up suddenly, taking from atop Loki's left horn a single black feather that had somehow alighted there in his wanderings, perhaps borne on the cutting wind.

“Huh. That’s big for a crow-feather." Athena twirled the black quill between her thumb and forefinger.

Loki found the spin of the shining barbs, now flashing indigo, now flashing violet, almost mesmerizing.

"Maybe Huginn and Muninn are following us and listening in,” Athena jested.

Loki shivered. The feather felt like an omen, and an ill one at that, though Tony and Kurt both informed him that omens did not exist.

“Oh, poor baby!” Athena turned on him a look full of sympathy. “You’re going kind of greenish--are you not feeling great? I thought you still looked on the peaked side. And here I’ve been obsessing about gyros—did I totally make you want to retch?”

“No, no, truly they sound delicious, and I am also extremely hungry, despite having gobbled up all the snacks Kurt packed for me.”  
“I guess you probably needed them,” his friend answered, squeezing Loki’s hand in her friendly way.

“Athena, I’m going to have a baby,” Loki blurted, which was not at all the way he meant to tell her—and yet the words _would_ come out.

He stood abashed, wanting to turn his face from hers, to hang his head, though Athena always said he mustn’t, that he ought to stand proudly.

“Oh. Wow. Loki, my God!”

They walked slowly together across the long curve of the lawn that sloped down toward the parking lot, frosty leaves beneath the soles of their boots crunching in the silence, their breaths steaming in the air.

In the midst of this, Athena stopped suddenly, tugging on Loki’s jacket-sleeve.

“Honey, are you ready?" she asked. "I mean, really _ready_ ready? This isn’t some dynasty-building thing of Tony’s that you’re going along with because you’re crazy in love and also incredibly sweet?”

“I don’t believe so,” Loki answered. “He left the decision to me. Understandably, because I am male, the event comes as rather a shock to us both.”

“I’ll bet,” Athena answered, in a tone Loki found himself unable to read.

After some minutes, she continued, “Is this all part of your… uh, thing?” Her hand made a vague gesture. “Oh, the gods help me, I don’t want to offend! Your, um, mutation? Is it what you meant when you called yourself _‘ergi_?’ Because I Googled that one, and I don’t think that’s part of the original meaning.”

“My mutation, yes.” Loki felt himself slipping into a state of unease, almost of sorrow. Had he thought, because it had been easy to tell his dear teacher, that all would be so receptive to his strange news? “Because I am ill-made.”

“Swear to the gods, I will smack you upside the head if you ever say that again!” Athena wrapped both her hands around Loki’s arm, st pping him in his tracks. “I swear, Loki! All my life… All my life…”

Her arms slipped suddenly around his waist, holding him gently, but with such firmness he perhaps could not have moved, even had he wanted to do so. The fierceness of her, the strength, the devotion, sank in through Loki’s cold skin, warming him despite the wintry air around them.

“I feared you were disgusted with me,” he finally confessed.

“Loki,” she said, expressing, by his name alone, both fondness and chastisement, no other word needing to be spoken.

“How wrong I was, Athena, to have, for so much as an instant, doubted your friendship," Loki told her, filled now with contrition. "You, in all the world, would never be one of the ‘haters who hate,’ as Happy says. I know that of you. You are a radiant Shield-Maiden, of courage undoubted, and I have insulted you by laying my own fears at your door. I apologize most  
abjectly.”

“Accepted,” she answered, after no more than an instant’s passing.

“You are ever good to me, dear friend.”

“I like ‘Radiant Shield-Maiden,” Athena told him. “I may add that to my resume.”

“You must certainly do so,” Loki answered, knowing all had been resolved, and that again Athena only jested, for their moment of tension had passed by, and all remained well and joyful between them. They might continue on their way, leave Loki’s things in the trunk of Tony’s fine car as they’d intended, and then allow the driver to depart (she was a kind lady by the name of Matilda, extremely knowledgeable in the ways of the Midgardian-American sport of baseball), telling her Athena would see him home.

Furthermore, they would eat their gyros, exactly as they'd planned, and after Loki would explore the wonders of Athena's studio, viewing the cunning pieces upon which she worked.

A short distance from the parking lot, however—with the shining black car actually in view--his friend stopped, so abruptly Loki nearly collided with her sturdy black-clad self.

“Loki, don’t be obvious about noticing," she whispered, "But there’s a guy kind of, uh… lurking, I guess, near your ride. A big guy. Baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. Don’t look!”

 _How am I meant to see him if I don’t look?_ Loki wondered—though he knew, really. He sent his _seiðr_ out in a gentle sweep, gathering thoughts, gathering impressions.

In the next moment, he felt sick, and weary, though not from any overexertion. His pleasant plans for the afternoon went up as smoke to the heavens.

“All is well,” he told his friend in dull tones. “The man is known to me.”

“Your mouth says fine, your face doesn't. Clearly not a buddy of yours.” Athena’s countenance, her voice, became fierce and protective. Loki could quite imagine her, armed with spear and shield, fighting off all enemies. "Loki, what gives?"

“No, not a friend. A man Tony… works with. I had not expected him here, yet fear I will be forced to speak with him. Because of this, I must, with great reluctance, request from you a raincheck, dearest Athena.”

“Is he going to hurt you, Loki? Make trouble for you?” His friend continued to look fierce. “You don’t need to protect me, you know--if that's what you're thinking."

“Fear not, _hjarta minn_. He only doesn’t care for me, and the time for our conversation is overdue. No good can come of it, I fear, yet, I devoutly hope, also no ill. Our talk will only be tedious, and take away from the pleasure of the day, and I had so looked forward to the deliciousness of the gyros.”

“Oh, honey, there’ll be another time. Just tell the dude that if he makes trouble for my Loki, your favorite goddess will kick his whitebread butt.”

“You are the goddess of war, after all.”

Athena laughed. “Damn straight!”

She pulled Loki down slightly to kiss his cheek.

After, Loki sank to the frozen ground at the base of an ornamental pine tree, chin resting on his upright knees.

“I can stay…?” Athena suggested. “You look so sad, honey.”

“There is no need,” Loki answered. “Though you are kind, always. Farewell until we next meet, Athena.”

"See you soon, Lok."

His friend departed slowly, glancing back, with suspicion, over her shoulder now and then. Loki sincerely hoped the intruder could feel the white-hot fire of her displeasure.

“Captain Rogers,” he said, softly and, he hoped, politely enough to be thought acceptable. “There was no need to skulk.”

Loki knew “skulk” was perhaps not a polite word, yet could not prevent it from leaving his lips. “You might easily have rung me upon my StarkPhone," he suggested, "And we might have made an appointment to meet, as civilized people do, I'm told."

Steven Rogers approached him, grim-faced, and with little haste.

 _Why does he do it?_ Loki wondered. _Why does he bother with me, who clearly can—and would—_ _harm no one? Why does he come to me here?_

At the same time he reached, with infinite caution, into the approaches to Steven’s mind, searching not for ammunition, or for any means of attack, but for anything, however flimsy, he might use for his own defense.

“What are you up to this afternoon, Loki?” the Captain asked, his tone, as always, well-modulated.

Kurt had taught him that one. “Up to,” at times, might be an accusation, at other times only a simple query. He wouldn’t rise to bait not actually being offered.

“I made plans to eat gyros with my friend Athena—which are a food of her people, pronounced not as in ‘gyroscope,’ but with the sound of a ‘Y’ to start, and then to rhyme with ‘heroes.’ Have you tasted them? Athena tells me they are very good. After, I had planned to visit her studio, but she has given me a raincheck, and now all my time is yours.”

Loki met Steven’s eyes, which although stern in appearance, and bright with dislike, did not appear overly suspicious, at least to the point of threat.

His thoughts were another matter.

“You have no regard for me,” Loki said. “You believe I exist only for cruelty and deception, yet who would I wish to deceive? Who might I threaten? In the words of that which you call your Holy Book, ‘ _I am a stranger and a sojourner with you_ ,’ and even if I wished, I know I could never so much as defend myself from harm, knowing the consequences to follow would prove too  
grim.”

" _'The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose,_ '" Rogers said, his mouth a hard, straight line.

"You mistake me." Loki shivered suddenly. The Captain, who everyone called good, frightened him, because, beneath his undoubted qualities of truth and honor and decency, there lay something that judged, ever and always. Something unbending. Something that, if challenged, might indeed burst into violence. Something that bore the trust, from time to time, of untrustworthy men whom Steven Rogers--not reading hearts and minds as Loki did--had not yet recognized as unworthy.

 _There were the children Kurt spoke of once.  During the time of Jul,_ he thought _.  The taken children.  Though he was part of their taking, this Captain of Midgardians trusted where he should not trust, never knowing they would be hurt._

 _And yet they **were** hurt, _he reminded himself _.  What use  are the best of intentions, in the end, if trust only leads to harm?_

“Why don’t you get up, Loki?” Steven asked him. “That ground must be cold.”

 _I wish the pine tree at my back would cleave and open,_ Loki thought _, That I might hide myself within, even if I had to hide twelve years, like Ariel imprisoned by Sycorax the Witch._

Loki’s search became nearly frantic, for he found the hero’s mind filled with both a secret, burning, impatient, misunderstood love and with prisons, all of them made for such as him--or, at least, for the dark and untrustworthy being the Captain perceived him to be. 

Loki couldn’t even say why he feared these gaols, with their isolated cells, so completely. Yet he did.  
  
He delved into Steven’s thoughts, deep and deeper still, in search of something, anything, that would cause the man to leave him be, both now and in the future. Loki's own mind felt worn and bloodied, and he stumbled, suddenly, into a corridor narrow, and twisted, and kept secret, far deeper in than he’d ever dared to venture inside another's head.

There, in an instant, he found both the name of that love and the object of his search--a single, precious thing, an image, an identity kept within an unbreakable treasure chest, which Loki nonetheless unlocked with ease.

The jewel that might yet, perhaps, save him.

“If I found him and brought him to you?” he asked in desperation, his voice raw. “If I caused the damage to become undone, the vessel remade, unbroken, would you pledge then, Captain, to let me alone? Would you pledge with most solemn unsunderable oaths?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Steven told him. His eyes reminded Loki of the words Thor used to describe the ice of Jötunnheimr--"a cold that stretches on to infinite depths."

“But you do! You do!” Loki leapt to his feet—too fast, for the world spun round him. “He is the one you truly care for, and his name is…” Loki swallowed hard, afraid, in the midst of all this, he would suddenly be sick, and helpless with his sickness. “"Is..."

"James Buchanan Barnes,” he managed at last. The name felt hard and uncomfortable in his mouth. 

“Bucky,” Steven said, in a dull, hurt voice. "You’ll never find him. He doesn’t want to be found. And even if you did manage to track him down, how could you help him? You, Loki, of all people.”

The Captain's pale eyes narrowed. “God of lies,” he spat out suddenly, as if he'd tasted something foul.

“Nonetheless, give me one week,” Loki answered. “Only one week.”

“One week,” Captain Rogers repeated, “Do what you've promised, in good faith, or you’ll move to less comfortable quarters, where there’s no Tony Stark to protect you. Are we clear?"

This is beneath you, all beneath you! Loki wanted to cry out. Instead, his teeth bit down upon his lower lip, and he lay back against the tree-trunk in a state of utter misery, all the day's warmfeelings vanished, leaving him colder than any _Jötunn_ inside.

His so-called protection had proved no protection at all, but turned as a sword against him. What could he do in a week, hunting a shadow warrior with no wish to be discovered? What did he know now of cunning or stealth?

“Yes,” Loki answered, frozen to the heart of his heart. “Yes, Captain, I have understood you.”


	19. Can't Find My Way Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony hears about Steve and Loki's encounter. Avengers are assembled. Loki finds himself in a mostly-unfamiliar city. Bucky wishes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Calypso was fun party music for parental types during the 60's (and who doesn't love a rousing chorus of "Day-o, daaaay-o?"), populatized by "King of Calypso" Harry Belafonte (passionate civil rights activist and the first individual artist to sell a million units with his 1956 breakthrough album Calypso). _"Matilda, hooma locka chimba"_ is part of the chorus, from the song of the same name, the _"take me money"_ line Tony quotes is repeated several times throughout the song.
> 
> " _The Stars and Stripes Forever_ ," declared "Official National March of the U.S." by Act of Congress, was composed by "March King" John Philip Sousa on Christmas Day, 1896.
> 
> A "stone killer" is one who kills without conscience or remorse. " _The Stone Killer_ " is the title of a l973 Charles Bronson film about the death of a hitman.
> 
> It's not easy for me to pick a favorite movie, but Wim Wenders's 1987 magnum opus, _Wings of Desire_ (German title, _Der Himmel über Berlin_ ("The Sky/Heaven Over Berlin") is right up near the top of the list, for so many reasons.
> 
> The late Peter Falk was an American actor, universally known for his role as the trenchcoat-wearing Lieutenant Columbo in the long-running Columbo mystery series.
> 
> The time difference between New York and Berlin is 6 hours.
> 
> Loki is on the observation deck of the Victory Column, standing about 220 feet (67 meters, give or take) above the city of Berlin, with the golden statue of Victory above him.
> 
> Loki's anxiety with heights is clearly either something new, or something that had originally been trained out of him, since we know in the past he drove airships like a frickin' maniac.
> 
> Light pollution (aka "photopollution" or "luminous pollution"), is defined as excessive, misdirected, or obtrusive artificial light. Especially in urban areas, it competes with starlight, interferes with astronomy, and can damage ecosystems, as well as having unwanted effects on health.
> 
> We'll keep in mind that The Winter Soldier's ten activation words include: stove, one, kind-hearted, and rusted.
> 
>  _Otto of the Silver Hand_ , first published in 1888, is a children's novel set in medieval times (the era, rather than the restaurant) written and illustrated by Howard Pyle. Maybe we can hazard a guess that Bucky (who was born in 1917), in his quest to  
> recover his memories, is revisting books he might have known as a boy, such as _Otto_ , and _The Arabian Nights_. Let's assume the version he's reading is Andrew Lang's  
>  translation for children, first published in 1898.
> 
> The song Bucky hears through his wall is Blind Faith's 1969 classic, " _Can't Find My Way Home"_. Blind Faith was an early "supergroup" made up of Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, Ginger Baker, and Ric Grech. It's Steve Winwood's voice that Bucky hears.

* * *

“Mr. Stark?” Tony’s ever-perfect (and still not broken, to his utter amazement) P.A., Vanessa, poked her head around the edge of his office door, leading Tony to wonder why she hadn’t just buzzed him, the way she normally would. A second glance at her expression gave him all the explanation he needed: something was up, something big and not necessarily good.

“Do you have a minute to speak to Matilda Matheson? It’s urgent.”

Backing up Vee’s always excellent non-verbal communication skills, the tone of her voice told him he damn well better have a minute. Respectfully. Sir.

“Matilda…?” Tony raised both eyebrows at her. He wasn’t always the best with names, and this one certainly wasn’t ringing any bells.

“Loki’s driver.”

“Oh. Yeah. Oh!” Tony pulled his feet off the edge of his desk and levered himself to actually sitting upright in his swanky office chair. “Sure thing, Vee. Send her in, please.”

Once Vanessa’s head popped out again, Tony came around to perch on the front of his desk, a move that was supposed to put the person he was meeting with at ease, or inspire confidences, or something along those lines.

He bounced to his feet when the driver entered, stretching out his hand for a shake. “Matilda!"

The name ( _hooma locka chimba_ ) reminded him of the Harry Belafonte calypso records that had once played on low in the background of pretty much every single one of his father's cocktail parties, though Matilda Matheson didn't really seem the type to " _take me money and run Venezuela,_ " unlike the Matilda of the song.  Rather, she had a look of unassailable reliability.  Which probably explained why he'd chosen her to drive Loki in the first place, before utterly forgetting her name.

"Nice to see you again!" Tony followed up. "How’d everything go today?”

Loki's new driver accepted his shake with a firm grip, not too surprisingly--the woman looked like she easily could have been the cousin, or big sis, or some other close relation, of ace tennis pro Serena Williams, though her tailored uniform hid a lot of the muscle. What did surprise Tony was that she didn’t react much to his buddy-buddy routine. On the couple times she’d filled in as his own personal driver, she’d struck him as an unusually cheerful person. Professional, but smiley. He’d liked her.

She wasn’t smiling now.

“Loki disappeared.”

“When you say…?”

“Disappeared,” she repeated, with emphasis.

“Oh. _Disappeared_.”

Before Tony could cook up some half-assed story to explain suddenly-vanishing blue (supposed) cousins, Matilda Matheson whipped out her StarkPhone and showed him an unexpected little piece of cinematography.

Damn, the lenses and microphones he put in his StarkPhones just kept getting better and better. Tony would have taken a moment to be impressed with his product if he hadn’t been so caught up in the movie itself. Volume up and zoomed in, he could hear every nuance, practically see every eyelash.

He played the film through twice, then stopped it.

Gods, the look on Loki’s face!

Fucking Steve.

 _Fucking_  goddamned Steve!

He buzzed for Vanessa, surprised his hand didn't shake as he pressed the button. “Vee, would you copy the film on Ms. Matheson’s phone and send it to me?”

Vanessa reappeared. He passed the cell her way.

“Thank you. Matilda, you’ll get that back from Vanessa in a couple minutes. Needless to say… ” He wasn’t usually so formal with his assistant, but at that exact moment his brain had zoomed into overdrive. He couldn’t believe…

Didn’t want to believe…

They’d had their differences, sure, he and Stevo-o, but this went above and beyond, into the realm of total asshattery.

He’d always thought Cap was a good guy. Emphasis on good. But this… This wasn’t anyone’s concept of good. This verged on bullying. Was bullying. Possibly even extortion, and the last thing Loki needed in life was even a single more second of that shit.

“You don’t need to worry, sir,” Matilda told him, "I'll keep this to myself."

Tony believed her. She was that kind of lady. Loyal. Trustworthy. All those good things.

Of course, he once would have attributed the exact same qualities to Captain-fucking-America.

“J.,” Tony ground out, through clenched teeth. If he’d been Bruce, at this point, he’d most likely have been green and bigger than a goddamn city bus.

Fucking Steve.

“Send out the signal. Avengers Assemble. No exceptions. Get Phil too, if he’s in the building. If he isn’t in the building, get him anyway. I don’t care if he’s off fighting aliens.”

“As you wish, sir,” J.A.R.V.I.S. answered. Behind his stuffy butler voice, he didn’t sound pleased, which had to mean he'd watched the movie too. “Conference Room A?”

“You got it.” Tony slid to his feet. “Walk out with me, Matilda?”

She nodded, looking grim.

“Out indefinitely,” he told Vanessa in passing.

“I’ll take care of everything,” his P.A. assured him, then paused. “Good luck, sir.”

“Thanks, Vee.” The calm in his voice astounded him, all the more so since it sat on top of a barely-suppressed caldera of emotion.

The elevator arrived within two seconds. Tony and the driver both got in.

“Nice work, by the way,” he told her. Still calm. Calm was good. “Excellent initiative.”

“I lost Loki.” Her voice sounded anguished, an emotion duplicated in her big, dark eyes. After a second, she added, “I realize I don't really know him, but... He’s a sweet boy, isn't he?”

“He is that.” Tony pulled in a deep breath, held it, let it out again. “You did exactly the right thing. You documented, and brought the intel to me. Someone else might have panicked. Someone else might have been too impressed with Captain Spangles. You kept your head.”

The words didn’t seem to console her. Loki seemed to get to people like that—people who weren’t total asshats, anyway.

People who weren’t goddamned Steve.

Almost before he knew it, the elevator stopped at Avengers’ Central.

“My floor,” Tony said. “Seriously, Matilda, you were right, not getting into it with them. There was nothing else you could have done. Take the rest of the day if you like, J.A.R.V.I.S. will square it with your supervisor. Oh, and Vanessa should have your phone ready, whenever you want to stop back in at corporate.”

“Good luck, sir,” was all she said, repeating Vee’s words.

“Thanks. I’ll fix this. I will.” Tony stepped out onto the floor.

Showtime.

He’d never wanted a drink worse in his life.

He'd never been less likely to take one.

Still outwardly calm, inwardly seething, Tony strolled into a room full of mystified Avengers.

Steve had even brought his buddy, Sam Wilson, he noticed, like Steve-o was spoiling for some Battle Royale, to take place right there in Conference Room A, and wanted backup—yet there he sat, all Stars-and-Stripes-Forever, smiley and chatty.

Smiley and chatty with Thor, no less. What a spangle-suited douche.

 _Mentioned yet how you scared his baby bro into telepo_ _rting off for regions unknown, in pursuit of_ _a stone killer?_ Tony thought. _Nope. Don't imagine you did._

Seconds later Kurt bamfed in, with full fire-and-brimstone, still in his scrubs and smelling, literally, of death. Or at least of formaldehyde.

Without a word needing to be spoken, J. cued up the film.

* * *

Once, with Kurt, Loki had watched a film in Kurt’s native tongue about angels, and a circus, and a small, convivial man in a trenchcoat who had once, apparently, been one of the angels’ number, before he decided to fall from heaven and taste the delights of earth.

Kurt had needed to explain to him a great many things, such as the wall that had once divided that city, what angels were said to be and why they might commonly be found in libraries (perhaps for much the same reason _he_ had been discovered outside one), and why nearly everyone, at least at the time the film had been made, would almost certainly have known the small, convivial man by the name “Lieutenant Columbo.”

The film had seemed strange to Loki, not at all like the films he generally watched with Tony, in which muscular men mostly caused things to explode while uttering the word “fuck” repeatedly. It had also seemed very dreamlike, and beautiful, and Loki had since watched it again and again since, hoping to part the curtains of those dreams, to see what lay behind them, reminded always of the place he went to inside his own head, when he sought to make wonderful things.

From viewing that film, he now recognized the city where he stood, the city which Kurt had called Berlin, a name that possibly meant “Little Bear,” in an older version of Kurt's German tongue. He recognized, also, the great golden being above him, which he had first taken for a  
different sort of angel, yet Kurt had told him was meant to represent the goddess Victory.

She rose over him now, high above a place already set high in the air, the shine of her gold muted with the darkness, for here night had fallen, as it hadn't yet in the Manhattan home Loki had left behind.

“There’s an observation platform, just beneath her toes,” Kurt had told him, laughing. “You can look down and see the entire city spread out like a carpet below you.”

Only Kurt didn’t mind heights. They never made his stomach flip, or his head feel strange. He never felt as if terrible winds tore around him, trying to push him closer and closer to the meagerly-fenced edge.

Loki felt so alone up here, and so cold, so cold…

Unable to bear what he felt, Loki shut his eyes, sifted quickly through the thoughts he’d discovered in Steven Rogers’s head, and leaped again.

With this jump--not through air (a thought unthinkable!), but through the fabric of the universe--he arrived at street level. Here, at least, the air seemed warmer than the air of New York, now left behind, if only by a degree or so.

Loki felt utterly spent, unable to plan, to think ahead--scarcely able, even, to force his mind to work on the most basic of levels.

He’d been hungry before, but now he'd become ravenous, faint, his head spinning—all the more so when he glanced upward and saw tall buildings piercing the sky above, a sky that seemed to whirl over him. The stars, which ought to have been dim with what Tony called “light  
pollution,” moved in a strange, too-bright dance that dazzled his vision.

Loki stumbled forward, missed the edge of the pavement and fell, landing hard on his hands and knees, a pain shooting straight from his twisted ankle and up into his back teeth. He tried to rise again, but couldn’t, in fact, only fell further, onto his side on the wet street.

A woman’s voice, there, accused him of drunkenness. Another voice, a man’s, spoke a word that wasn’t “Mutie!”–-not in the German tongue--but meant the same thing. A heavy black car raced toward him, its driver most likely not even noticing his presence, a dark figure in dark clothing, lying on the edge of the dimly-lighted street, and Loki only managed to roll out of its way, back to the safety of the pavement, with a heartbeat to spare.

What had he done, what had he done? Jumped forward in his terror, without a thought of what was to come?

Not paused to think, taken himself far from Tony, with no way to bring himself home again, or even to raise his body from the wet, cold asphalt.

Why had he thought he might find this “Bucky,” so desired by Captain Steven Rogers?

Why should he think he might succeed in anything? When did he ever succeed?

 _It’s only the worm-that-was talking, dearest,_ a soft voice sang in his head. _Only the worm, pay it no heed. Only… the soft voice paused. Only we are very hungry._

Loki curled himself into a ball, and wept, until a deeper night swept in.

* * *

Like a row of characters in a cartoon, their faces all swiveled toward Steve at once. Maybe their eyes all bugged out at once, too, the way Tony felt his own eyes doing.

“Well.” Phil’s calm, dry voice broke the silence. “When we had our little conversation about mending fences, Captain, that wasn’t precisely what I envisioned.”

“You sent him after Bucky?” Sam Wilson asked, incredulous. “Seriously, which one, Cap, if you don’t mind my asking? Your mentally damaged friend? Or the unstoppable crazed assassin who, I might mention,  _pulled the entire steering column of my sweet ride straight out through my goddamned windshield?_ And also, by the way, who was that poor mutant kid?”

“Loki,” Thor answered heavily. “My much-damaged and entirely reformed—also dear to my heart—brother, who nevermore would seek to harm any. And you and I would have words, Steven Rogers, my Shield-Brother no more, for never under the sun of this Realm or any other  
would I allow you to hurt my Loki, or to hold him in captivity, as Loki ought well to have known.”

The thunder-god turned to Tony, 100% hurt puppy. “Shield-Brother, and soon to be brother-by-law, how could Loki not have known?”

Tony had been wondering more or less the same thing. Why did Steve have Loki so spooked? What had he himself missed? Loki had to have known that--even leaving him out, for the moment--Thor, Phil and Clint, the entire X-Team, none of them would have let anything horrible  
happen to him, or even anything mildly unpleasant.

At this point, Kurt let loose with a stream of German words that sent Bruce’s eyebrows (because his ScienceBro, bless his heart, actually worked on his foreign language skills) shooting right up to his hairline. Even Tony, with his crappy command of the German language caught a few. They weren’t complimentary.

That tail of Kurt's (not sassy now, but furious) snapped through the air so fast it was nothing but a blue blur, and with a crack like Indiana Jones’s whip, wrapped in a triple noose around Steve’s neck, yanking him straight off his chair and onto his star-spangled ass.

Tellingly, not even Wilson leaped up to help him, though Phil did do a throat-clear before suggesting, in his usual mild tones, “Mr. Wagner, if you’d just delay throttling our national treasure a moment…?”

He spoke the word “treasure” with a certain amount of irony.

Much as he’d have preferred to let Steve choke until his face turned bluer than Kurt's, Tony climbed out of his seat, wrapping an arm around Kurt’s shoulders. “C’mon, Fuzzy, let the man up. I, for one, want to see how he explains this.”

Kurt stood frozen for a moment, then another moment, breathing hard, before his tail slowly unwrapped itself, coil by threatening coil, until it trailed, limply and sadly, onto the gray-carpeted floor.

“Thank you,” Phil said. “Now, Steve… care to explain what we've just seen?”

“It never happened,” Steve said, sounding more than a little hoarse. “I mean… Yes, I went to talk to Loki at his school. Neutral ground, I figured, and I thought we could maybe have a cup ofcoffee, hash things out a little… But this—it never happened, guys. Never. I mean, it’s no secret Loki and I aren’t exactly friends, but I know I don’t have that kind of authority, and even if I did, what do you take me for?”

“Maybe the dickwad who appeared in that movie?” Clint put in. “And if you wonder why our furry blue mutant friend here freaked out slightly, maybe it’s because he can’t hear Loki at all, and neither can I. Kurt and I find this disturbing. Kurt and I don’t like feeling disturbed.”

“It never happened,” Steve repeated, with a kind of stubborn despair that made Tony feel somewhat squirmy—because, on the one hand, _evidence_ , but on the other hand… Steve. Who could be kind of a dick from time to time, it was certainly true, especially when he got up on his  
high horse. But Steve's dickness tended to be of a specific kind. Stubborn, check. Inflexible, sure thing, now and then. Set in his ways, it had been observed...

But this?  When it meant putting most of the team against him? 

If nothing else, Steve believed in the team.

Tony couldn’t argue that Loki felt uncomfortable with Captain Spangles, that Steve scared him, as did any thought of being separated from the new family he’d come to love. However, in the equation of Loki+Steve+Baby+Crazy-making Hormones+Traumatic Brain Injury+Unknown=Blind Panic Flight to Elsewhere, solve for Unknown, only one solution truly made sense, and it probably wasn’t, “Steve Rogers is a hundred times more of an asshat than anyone ever suspected."

Tony met Thor’s sky-blue and oddly-vulnerable eyes. Point Break looked miserable in more ways than could totally be explained by even the sudden disappearance of his baby brother.

“Big Guy, I hate to ask…” he began.

“Does this reek of our father?” Thor asked, sounding weary.

Thor never sounded weary.

“You know that it does, Shield-Brother," the god of thunder went on, in that same exhausted, hopeless voice. "You know that it does, beyond even the least possibility of question."

He touched Mjolnir's head with his fingertips, blindly tracing rune after rune, before crying out, in a tone Tony'd never heard from Thor (stupid Thor, insensitive Thor, object of much mockery) in the past, and hoped never to hear again.

If forced to give that tone a name, Tony would have called it, "the voice of ultimate anguish." It made him want to comfort Thor--Thor of all people!--to assure him everything would be okay, he didn't have to worry, even if Tony knew that would be lying. Anything to take away that much pain. Anything.

"When, I pray, will he ever give us leave to be quit of him?" Thor pleaded, of the apparently indifferent universe. "When will we be let to live peaceable lives of our own?"

A heavy silence stretched out between them, until Tony said, finally, "So. Yeah. Odin Allfucker strikes again."

"Now the question now is," Phil put in, "What do we do about it?”

"I only want Loki back with us, safe with us--safe as he can be, anywhere in all this world," Kurt said quietly. He set a hand on Steve's shoulder, squeezing gently, maybe delivering a silent apology--of sorts. His and Cap's eyes met, but Tony wasn't sure what exactly passed between them.

"I'm a stranger here, not one of you," Kurt went on, "I know these decisions are not mine to make. But, please, let us bring Loki home first, from wherever he has gone to."

"I'm with you on that one," Tony chimed in.

"And then?" Natasha asked.

"And then," Kurt answered, in the same quiet voice, "What must follow... will follow."

* * *

Sometimes the Soldier felt as if his brain had been put in a furnace, or a stove, someplace like hell, filled with fires that never stopped burning.

Sometimes he felt as if he had never existed, other times as if he’d lived far, far too many years, so many that the years had turned to rags, more holes than fabric in them.

Sometimes he dreamed he’d lived a thousand different places, but that all of them were gray, and cold and terrifying, which was why he didn’t like any of them. He liked this place, though. It was compact, and cozy, like the burrow of a timid small animal (though he wasn’t in any way small, and he suspected, if the right—or the wrong—things happened, he wouldn’t be timid, either.

He liked the smallness, wrapped safe and tight around him. His mattress on the floor.  His one comfortable chair.  The little kitchenette and  the tiny bathroom.  The shelf of paperbacked books he’d collected, one by one, from the second-hand bookseller in the open air market, who sometimes had books in English.

Most nights the Soldier sat in the comfortable chair (discarded by some faceless stranger on the curb as too tattered and rusted and worn, but carried home, and cherished, by him), sinking into a miniature world from those battered books' pages, eating purple plums one by one as he waited for his memories to come back again.

The kind-hearted lady at the fruit stand told him plums were good for that. For memories. She said they contained antioxidants. Which sounded like a magic word. Like “ _Abracadabra!_ ”

A single flourish, and there’s magic. _Abracadabra!_

He read a book called _Otto of the Silver Hand_ , but Otto’s hand was not like his.

Otto's hand was just silver. It didn’t move and work.

Where had his silver hand come from, and the arm it was attached to?

Why was it all lost? Why didn’t he remember?

Maybe, when the genie woke, he'd be granted his three wishes?

The Soldier wasn’t greedy, he only wanted three things:

To know his own name.

To know his own memories, however hard and terrible they might be.

To know if somewhere, anywhere, in the world, somebody cared for him.

All night, the boys next door, unseen, smoked sweet, sticky-smelling hashish and played their music loud, all the songs sounding clearly through the paper-thin walls. Now and then, the words that went with that music got stuck inside his head.

 _“Come down off your throne,"_ a singer sang tonight, in a high, sweet, sad voice _, "And leave your_  
_body alone..."_

 _Somebody must change_  
_You are the reason I've been waiting so long_  
_Somebody holds the key_  
_Well, I'm near the end and I just ain't got the time_  
_And I'm wasted and I can't find my way home..._

The Soldier echoed those last lines, forming the words softly in his mouth, too softly for anyone else to hear him, even the genie, who undoubtedly possessed superior genie ears.

The blue genie who'd dropped, battered and tattered, out of the sky, to be carried, like the broken and abandoned chair, into his home.

“ _I am wasted_ ,” the Soldier sang, “ _And I can’t find my way home_.”

All night, curled in his chair, he read of wishes, and of Aladdin, pursued by thieves.


	20. What We Wish For

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony and Bruce try to find Loki. Steve makes a confession. Bucky is given treasure--and the first of his wishes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Supremes had a big hit in 1965 with _"Stop! In the Name of Love,_ " written by Motown Record starmakers Holland–Dozier–Holland. Many of us would be telling lies if we claimed never to have sung this song into the handles of our hairbrushes (while making the hand gestures, of course) at some point during our formative years.
> 
> The revelation about Tony's grandfather is actually Marvel canon. I seriously have to  
> question a man (Howard Stark) who not only rejects his own origins but is emotionally distant with his only son--and then there's the unrestrained womanizing... Howard appears to have had some issues. I can't help but think Tony would have been better off knowing his own grandparents than with all his father's billions.
> 
> To give someone "the stink-eye" means to give a dirty look, or to look with disdain  
> or distrust. The origin of the term is uncertain, though some believe it started in  
> Hawaii and was spread through surfer culture.
> 
> Corn Flakes, or cornflakes, are a well-known breakfast cereal first created in 1894 by Dr. John Harvey Kellogg for the patients of his Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan.
> 
> "Dungarees" (from the Urdu word _dungri_ , originally meaning "a coarse calico," after Dungrī, the district of Mumbai where such fabric was made)--is the grandparent word for "blue jeans," in common use through the 1950's.

* * *

“But, sir, what is it you want me to look for, precisely?” J.A.R.V.I.S. asked, for what felt like the bazillionth time in the past forty-four hours (and counting).

Tony groaned, dropping his head onto the lab bench in a way he knew probably looked melodramatic, but he couldn’t help himself. He had to relieve his feelings somehow. His brain had officially stopped working. He was too fucking tired to actually think coherently about anything, he’d drunk so much coffee he felt sick, and he pretty much hated everyone at the moment.

Not really. He mostly just despised himself, because he, Tony Stark, genius extraordinaire, couldn’t seem to come up with a single viable idea for locating his missing fiancé. He longed for Loki to be there, safely back home in the penthouse with him, wanted him back more than he was fairly sure he’d ever wanted anything before in the entirety of his (nearly) fifty years on earth, and was, in addition, so, _so_ fucking scared, as scared for another person as he’d ever been in his life.

The thought of his guy being out there in the big, hard, cold world, completely alone and also so innocent, fragile and vulnerable (while also, incidentally, being one of the most powerful magical beings that same world had ever known) was a combination that terrified him more than he could admit, even to J.A.R.V.I.S., or to Bruce.

A hundred different scenarios about horrible stuff that might happen, each disaster worse than the last, rattled constantly and crazily around inside his head. Ways that Loki could get hurt. Ways he could panic and accidentally, in self-defense, do something he never meant to do...

Bruce gazed at him sympathetically. “Heat signatures, maybe? Look for an unusually low body temperature? Or energy? Does magic produce detectable energy?”

Tony groaned again. “Probably. If I’d bothered to try to measure it. Ever.”

Bruce frowned. “Actually… did I ask you that same question yesterday?”

When he thought about it, Tony found himself fairly certain that Bruce had. It seemed like there were no new questions, no useful ideas, only old stupid ones with which to ramp up their frustration. For the past two days, with J.A.R.V.I.S.’s help, including the A.I.’s ability to tap into, basically, whatever system he wanted to get into, Tony had worked through every single idea Bruce suggested, first on a local level, then nationally, then even internationally, plus tried a couple dozen more notions of his own.

Results? They both, with their big genius minds (combined with those almost limitless capabilities of J.’s even more genius mind), had circled around the problem about a million times, going nowhere, like so much water circling the drain. They not only hadn’t found Loki, they’d failed to detect so much of a hint of where he’d been.

“I measured it,” J.A.R.V.I.S. informed them stiffly—failure had started to make even the A.I. cranky. “The answer to your query is yes, magic most certainly does produce energy that I ought to find detectable. And yet I’ve found nothing.”

“Public surveillance cameras and facial recognition software?” Bruce asked--it actually came out closer to a whimper), with perhaps a garnish  of hopelessness.

“How ‘bout if we just type in ‘blue man with horns, light build, super tall?’” Tony snarked. “I’m sure it’s just that easy. I couldn’t possibly have already thought to try that first fucking thing.”

“Worldwide?” Bruce asked, clearly trying not to react to Tony’s crappy attitude.

“Yes!” J. and Tony chorused.

Five seconds later, recognizing Bruce’s shut-down, no-expression hurt face, Tony realized he’d probably gone too far with his pissiness.

“Look, bro, I’m sorry. Truly. I realize you’re trying to help. You are helping, and I’m being a butt.”

“You’re always a butt when you’re scared,” Bruce informed him.

Tony knew there wasn’t any point in arguing. Bruce understood him too well.  
“I’m aware,” he answered in a quiet voice. “I’m just… you know... Loki…”

“You’re scared and worried both, and who can blame you?” Bruce squeezed Tony’s shoulder in a brotherly kind of way—reminding Tony (when he should have reminded himself, in the sternest possible way), just how lucky he was to have Bruce here by his side, his colleague, his brother from another mother, his true friend.

“I should know better than to take it personally,” Bruce added. “I’d probably be the same with someone I loved. If I had someone to love. So, with that in mind, my friend, don’t sweat it. Do you think…? I mean, Loki—and I don’t mean this in a bad way—Loki’s what, the god of  
mischief? He’s tricky. Memories or no memories, he probably has evasion down to what he’d totally deny was a science. He probably has instincts we can’t even dream of.”

Bruce had started to get that holy zealot look in his eyes, the look he got when he forgot to be self-conscious and self-deprecating and let himself just get carried away on the flow of ideas gushing through his aforementioned pretty damn big brain.

He seated his glasses more firmly on the bridge of his nose, Bruce's equivalent of a girding of the loins.

“Meaning what, Bruce? What is it you’re suggesting?”

“We quit looking for Loki.” Bruce held out his palm in a “ _Stop! In the Name of Love_ ” type of hand gesture. “Wait. Hear me out. What if we look at it from the other direction?”

“Meaning?”

“Loki went after Bucky, right? And, Loki being Loki, it’s not unthinkable that he managed to find him.”

“It’s not _unthinkable_ ,” Tony said, “That Loki located him in about two seconds flat. It’s what happened after that has me worried.”

Bruce’s sympathetic look was definitely getting a workout that day.

“So…” his ScienceBro continued, with a slight frown of concentration, “What if, instead of trying to track Loki--who we could probably hunt for a thousand years with zero results, up until the exact moment he meant for us to find him—we look for Bucky instead. I mean, ninja assassin, or whatever he is, it still won’t be easy, but at least, unlike Loki, the guy’s human. He has to rely on planes, trains and automobiles like the rest of us. He doesn’t just tear open the fabric of the universe and vanish. That’s what Loki does, right? Tears open the fabric of the universe?”

“Something like that, yeah,” Tony answered, and, yes, he knew Bruce had a point, even a good one, but he’d been living on black coffee and stress for two days, and the truth was, he really had started crashing.

“So, here’s my suggestion. You eat something more nutritious than coffee and candy bars, then try to get some rest. J.A.R.V.I.S. and I continue to work the Bucky angle, with it understood that we wake you up if we find anything meaningful. When you feel like you’re able to function again, you come and spell me.” Bruce’s eyes, behind his glasses, were both kind and incredibly earnest, and it hit Tony again how lucky he’d been—to have a friend who cared so much, who would, without fail, do his best, always, to help him, whatever it was he needed.

“Kinda love you, bro,” he muttered, knowing Bruce would take the words as truly meant, despite how they were said.

“As I’m sure you realize,” Bruce replied, “The feeling’s mutual.”

 

The last thing Tony wanted, upon staggering through the front door of his sadly unoccupied penthouse, was to find Captain-fucking-America on his sofa, waiting, Tony greatly feared, just for him.

“J.,” he muttered (it seemed to be a muttering kind of day), “I swear, if you let Cap in…” Only he felt too exhausted to come up with any threats--any credible ones, at least.

J.A.R.V.I.S., being an understanding kind of A.I., didn't even mock him.

Tony sank down on the other end of the couch, giving Steve-o the best version of the stink-eye he could manage under the circumstances.

Steve passed him a brown paper bag stamped with the logo for Rosenblum’s Deli. “I thought you might like something to eat. And I wanted to talk.”

“You wanted to talk.” The total flatness in his own voice surprised Tony a little, but he was just so damn tired, and a big part of that tiredness was simply not wanting to deal with Steve and/or more of his Special Super Soldier Shit. To postpone having to do so, he unrolled the top of the paper bag, peering blearily into its depths.

“Turkey breast on nine-grain bread,” Cap informed him. “I discovered I like nine-grain bread.”

“Yays,” Tony answered, but he also pulled out half a sandwich and bit in. It tasted good-for-him, crunchy with veggies—but also good, as if his body was telling him, _About fucking time you feed me something I can actually use!_

_What, gallons of black coffee and the occasional Snickers bar aren't enough for you?_   Tony snarked back. Internally, of course. He didn't want Cap thinking he'd cracked.

“I realize…” Steve began. “I’ve been…”

Still munching, Tony looked at him. The look may possibly have verged on evil.

“I probably earned that.”

Tony swallowed. “Ya think?”

“I was wrong.”

“That…” He took another bite, chewed, swallowed. “Along with being the understatement of the century, doesn’t exactly help Loki.”

“See, I thought… And, I have to admit I held this against Clint, too, and to some extent, Dr. Selvig…”

“You thought a person could resist the special, special magic of the mind-thrall. That it was all a matter of having a big, strong, superior will, like yours.” Tony ate more sandwich, polishing off part one, starting in on part two. “Did it ever once hit you—“ (you self-satisfied dickwad), he  
added mentally, “—That being strong has nothing to do with it? Or that different people are strong in different ways? Some of which might not even, traditionally, be considered strength? Look at someone like Kurt…”

Steve touched his throat, swallowing reflexively.

_Ha ha, Fuzzy got you good,_ Tony thought. _I hope your butt hurts too, from where he yanked you_ _off your ch air onto your smug, muscular ass._

“Okay, there was that,” he said, aloud this time. “But ponder this. As strong as Kurt is, as quick, and potentially lethal, he rarely needs to use that strength out in the world, because he is also supernaturally patient, and kind, and he _listens_. It's kind of an underrated skill, listening. Where you and I charge in, fists swinging, repulsors blasting, he’d be observing, trying to diffuse, trying to understand the situation, trying to understand the situation, and the people involved. You know I like explosions as well as the next guy, but I suggest that if Kurt had been present when Loki first touched ground here on Earth, instead of Clint, Fury, and a buttload of S.H.I.E.L.D. goons, there might never have been a Battle of New York, we'd maybe wouldn't even have lost control of the Tesseract. Kurt would have seen in a flash that Loki was sick, mind-thralled, and desperate, and done something to actually help him. Eighty-plus people might still be alive, Loki would be our full-strength alien  
buddy, and I, personally, would have a far less world-class case of PTSD. You see what I’m saying?”

“All that,” Steve murmured.

“Why not?” Tony realized his sandwich had somehow disappeared, down to the last crumb. He crumpled up the Rosenblum’s bag.

A silence fell. A long silence. Silences tended to make Tony nervous, but he let this one ride, wanting everything he’d said to sink into Steve’s sometimes less-than-permeable brain.

“You’re right,” Steve said at last. “I did believe a man could resist. A real man.”

_And I’m sure Natasha would thank you for that one,_ Tony thought, _Not to mention Clint._

For once, though, he held his tongue. Different times, different words. He knew what Cap really meant.

“I thought if a guy fought hard enough, he could keep control. If he really wanted to. If he tried. Only I _did_ try, Tony. I tried and I fought with everything I had to give. Only I couldn’t fight _him._  He was everywhere inside me." Steve hung his head into his hands. His shoulders hunched,  
and it hit Tony--who'd started to be made even more nervous by his teammate's phraseology--that he probably _should_ feel that way, because what Steve described, and what it sounded like he was describing, were in fact, basically the same thing.

Tony'd thought he'd hit the limit of his hatred for Odin. Turned out he hadn't--not even close.

"God, Steve," he said.

"He was too big," Cap continued, "And in that minute I turned into helpless skinny Steve again, trying to take on something I had no power to defeat. One minute I heard a noise and glanced up, at this big black bird above me in the sky, and the next my head exploded. Then he was there, forcing his way in, picking up and examining every bad thing in me, my smugness, my unwillingness to forgive, my inflexibility, my sense of…”

Steve’s voice faltered, and his clear blue eyes clouded. They looked hurt and lost as a sad little boy’s. The little boy who stuffed newspapers into his shoes, trying to keep his feet warm. The boy who'd lost both his parents even earlier in life than Tony lost his.

"You don't have to be perfect, Steve," he said softly. "We all have our issues."

“I meant to be a good man, Tony, to just serve my country and serve it well, but I didn't. I wasn’t. I judged. I was blind to the fact that Loki and Bucky were—are—two sides of the same coin, used and abused by the wicked and powerful until they no longer knew who they were, or what they were doing. Only I could forgive Bucky because he’d been my friend, because he was like me. Do you know? My grandfather came over from the old country when the signs still said, "No Irish," when they'd draw pictures of Irishmen looking like apes."

"My grandfather was a Jewish fishmonger on the Lower East Side," Tony said, "And my father's name at birth sure wasn't 'Howard," much less 'Stark.' Which is to say, I know what you’re saying. As soon as we’re accepted, whoever 'we' are, sometimes we forget to accept anyone else.”

Steve’s hands came down from his head. He nodded slowly. Tony couldn’t ever remember seeing him look tired, not particularly, but he looked tired now. Weighed down by life, just like a regular person.

“You’re right. I wouldn’t forgive Loki, not so much because of what he’d done—even I could've seen he wasn’t the same when you took him in, heck, when _I_   took him in, if I'd taken the trouble to look—but because he wasn’t one of us, he was an outsider, an alien…

"I turned a blind eye to that business with the mutant children for the same reason. I was told they were a threat, a terrible threat, not like us at all, not like _real_ children. I accepted that lie because I looked only at the surface, at their skins.  Only they were, Tony, they were. They thought, and felt, and needed the same things any of us need, and they _were_ kids. He—the intruder--showed me that, how wrong I’d been, how stupid and blind."Then he laughed at me."  Steve glared down his own big, powerful hands, one tear, then another, rolling down his right cheek, Cap not even trying to fight them, as if he didn’t realize they were falling. “And he took me.”

"Steve..." Tony began.  He didn't really have anything to follow, any words that made this better.

"I couldn’t fight," Cap went on. "I couldn’t defend myself against him. All I could do was be there, and _see._  He hid himself from Loki inside me, behind all the bad stuff in my head, but let me observe how terrified Loki was—not of _him_ , but of _me_. I couldn’t stop that either. Loki saw me as a bully, like the guys I always hated. The guys I swore, when I was little, I wouldn’t ever be. And then, when Loki went…”

“Your ‘intruder’s’ name is Odin.” Tony’s voice came out rough—not harsh, not after what Steve had told him, more as if he’d been crying himself--or trying not to cry, which was actually closer to the truth. “He’s Thor and Loki’s father. They spent a thousand-plus years in his company.”

“I couldn’t stop him,” Cap repeated. “I couldn’t stop anything. And once he left… You realize…”

Steve stopped, his normally heroic (and slightly blank, in Tony’s book) face scrunched up horribly. “I think Loki will find Bucky, I think he’s brilliant at that sort of thing. And I think Bucky… The Winter Soldier… That evil guy in my head…”

“You think Loki will go after Bucky, but will find the Winter Soldier, pre-activated by Odin, and the Winter Soldier will kill him.”

“I’m sorry, Tony,” Steve told him, blue eyes flooded with tears. “I’m so sorry. I’d do anything to stop this. Anything.”

“Only no one knows where he is.”

"No one knows where he is," Steve echoed, without the slightest trace of hope in his voice.

* * *

The Soldier slept well, without dreams.

When he woke, found the genie in a corner of his tiny kitchen, sitting hunched up on the floor, eating Corn Flakes out of the box, cramming the dull, dry cereal into his mouth with his hands, like someone who was starving, like some starving people the Soldier had seen once, long ago, in a place he couldn't remember.

It occurred to him that he'd noticed the genie's unusual lightness when he’d picked him up from the street where he’d fallen, though he’d failed to notice that the genie was also very, very thin. His bones showed, in places, more than bones were ever meant to show.

The pretty blue color of his skin, that had once reminded the Soldier of the sky on a clear summer day, had also faded, to a gray  
more like the winter sky over Berlin.

Did genies get that way when locked too long in their lanterns, or when kept away from their lanterns? Was his genie sick?

The genie dug out a large handful of Corn Flakes and munched in an almost frantic way, not seeming to enjoy the flavor, but clearly desperately hungry.

The Soldier could sympathize.  He didn’t particularly like Corn Flakes either. He'd only recognized the box, when he hadn't known the other boxes crowded on the market shelves.

Everywhere he looked for something familiar, something he knew, but rarely found it, as if this world belonged to some other guy who wasn’t him, as if everything had changed and moved on without him.

“You’re hungry,” the Soldier said.

The genie nodded, his mouth full of the dry flakes. He seemed miserable, and it looked as if he got thinner by the minute, but maybe (it hit the Soldier suddenly), that was an illusion, a trick, something to deceive him into letting the genie loose again.

“I won’t try to leave you,” the genie said, “I came here to find you. Only, I must eat.”

He fumbled something, a thin golden card, out of the pocket of his dungarees. “Use this, if you haven’t money to spend. The code is 1- 9 – 6 – 6. Go now, quickly. I must eat!” he said again.

“You will leave,” the Soldier told him. “I’ve been reading about your kind. I know not to trust you. You’re only trying to fool me, I think. I'm not going to fall for it.”

The genie sighed, setting aside the box of Corn Flakes. The box didn’t rattle at all, which probably meant it was empty, when before it had been full.  The Soldier _really_ didn’t like Corn Flakes.

“James Buchanan Barnes,” the genie said. “Isn’t that the first wish you would ask of me? The name you most often called yourself, ‘Bucky,’ is a diminutive of Buchanan. James Buchanan, Jr., incidentally, served as fifteenth President of the United States of America, from 1857–61, the years which immediately proceeded the American Civil War. I presume you were named for him, though I possess no knowledge as to why that might have been. At any rate, such is your true name. Now, go quickly!”

Although the Soldier-- _no, **Bucky**.  I am **Bucky** , _he told himself--didn’t mean to, not really, he went.

He found this surprising.  Unless absolutely required, or when he could be concealed by the crowds of the open air market, he preferred not to go out by light of day. That was how they found him. When he openly showed his face.

That was when they took him, and then time disappeared, and he suffered terrible, terrible dreams.

Better to be cautious, to hide, to have his books and his little burrow and his sense of safety, however flimsy. Better to keep time running the way it was supposed to, smoothly and steadily, without any more holes.

  
He’d been born in 1917. That was one thing Bucky remembered. This year was 2016, which made him a ninety-nine-year-old guy with the face of a man of thirty.

Bucky found this terrifying. He kept waiting for the years to rush up on him, for his skin to sag and crack, for his body to wither. He checked every morning, the minute he woke up, and found each time that he hadn’t changed.

Only he might. He might any day.

The genie’s golden treasure-card in his pocket, Bucky pulled his cap down low over his eyes and made his way to the market closest to his home, traveling through alleys, clinging to shadows in hopes that they’d conceal him from those who watched always. He slipped through the market doors, trying to be a shadow himself, trying not to be noticed.

The genie had been correct in thinking he didn’t possess much in the way of money to spend, on food or anything else. Still, Bucky loaded his basket to overflowing, though he approached the cashier nervously, half-certain she'd accuse him of trying to steal, as the dark-haired boy  
who lived inside his head sometimes had—or did.

It all seemed very hazy. The dark-haired boy stole because sometimes someone needed food, or medicine, badly. Or something warm to wear. It wasn’t in his nature to be a thief. He didn’t do it for the thrill, as other boys might. He only did it to help, like Robin Hood.

Bucky had no money, and he didn’t wish to draw attention, but he let a kind-hearted woman show him how to whisk the genie’s golden card through a square little machine, then how to press in the magic numbers. Doing this, somehow, paid for everything, leaving Bucky perfectly free to leave with his bounty.

_Was this,_ he wondered, _the new way genies gave treasure to those who summoned them from their lanterns and into the world of men?_

Bucky hadn’t asked for treasure.

He didn’t need it.

He didn’t want to waste his wishes.

Had his genie tried to trick him in a way he'd never expected?

Still, he'd been given the first of his wishes. All the way home, hurrying back through the alleys, he whispered his newly-discovered name aloud to himself. “Barnes. James. James Buchanan. James Barnes. James Buchanan Barnes. Mr. Barnes.” The title “Mister” didn’t feel right in his  
mouth. After a minute’s blankness he tried “Sergeant” instead.

Sgt. Barnes felt better, more natural. He still didn’t know why—and “Bucky,” just Bucky, still felt most like himself.

Bucky Barnes.

He heard someone call that name to him from far, far in the distance.

Only no one called. Not really.

Sometimes his mind played tricks.

Bucky went faster, clinging to shadows so they wouldn’t see him.

He found his genie curled up on the mattress, looking forlorn beneath the gray blanket, which Bucky now noticed had become slightly threadbare. He turned up the heat to its highest setting, then the brown blanket, the only other one he owned, on top of the gray.

The genie gave him a look of what appeared to be gratitude.

“I’m sorry. I couldn’t get warm,” he said, his voice weak and hoarse, almost too weak for Bucky to make out the words. “What did you bring?”

Bucky produced a bottle of milk. The genie seized it and drank greedily, until the bottle was drained. After that, he ate an entire block of cheese, two apples, and a whole loaf of bread.

Once he’d eaten, the genie fell back, panted for a few seconds, then dropped off instantly to sleep.

Bucky had meant to mention that he hadn’t asked for treasure--besides which, the genie had consumed most of what he’d bought with the proceeds, so the treasure hadn’t exactly been spent to his benefit. Instead, he found he didn’t have the heart to wake his sleeping visitor.

He put the perishable foods away in his small icebox, then sat down to peel potatoes, glancing up, now and then, to watch the genie sleep.  
Already, his face seemed ever-so-slightly fuller, and a little of the pleasant blue had returned to his skin.

Bucky began to worry less that he’d somehow damaged the genie when he carried him home, that the touch of either his human hand or his metal hand had polluted or poisoned this being from another land.

Now it seemed more likely that the genie had only fallen hard, wherever it was he fell from, and found himself both very hungry and terribly tired.

Bucky put the potatoes in his one big pan, covering them with water so they wouldn’t go brown.

Stealthily, then, he moved closer, until he’d lowered himself to the floor, sitting cross-legged beside the mattress. He touched the genie’s cheek with his human fingers, finding the skin cool and inhumanly, impossibly soft beneath his fingertips. He traced the genie’s spiraled horns, brushed his curling black hair back from his forehead.

Everything felt soft, everything felt… exquisite, which was a word Bucky didn’t think he’d ever used in his life, not before this.

In his head, he imagined caring for the genie, and when he was well and strong again, the two of them would sit and read, or talk, a little at first, then more and more each day, until the genie was tamed, and wanted to stay with him, willingly, in his snug little burrow, not as his servant, but as his friend.

He wouldn’t need to ask for wishes. He’d grown so tired of hiding. Of having no one, the loneliness of his life slowly grinding him to pieces. Of time slipping by him in huge lost chunks.

Bucky imagined the two of them wandering the city by night, in the hours when there was never anyone around to spy on them, or hate them, or use them.

His time of freedom.

He imagined the two of them talking, laughing, about nothing and about anything, and never, never, in all the rest of their years, ever being lonely again.


	21. With a Little Help from My Friends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony bonds with J.A.R.V.I.S. Thor interrupts a mighty brood about the past to embark upon a new friendship.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title, this time, comes from the well-known Beatles song, part of their classic 1967 album _Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band_.
> 
> "Just say no" (or, alternatively, "just say no to drugs" was the catchphrase of an advertising campaign in the 80's and early 90's (part of the pretty much useless "War on Drugs") aimed at discouraging U.S. schoolchildren from using illegal drugs. Championed by former First Lady Nancy Reagan, the program wasn't exactly a roaring success, mostly because (like the War on Drugs itself), it ignored nearly every real world fact known about drug use and/or addiction.
> 
> The phrase " _Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow..._ " starts the second sentence of Macbeth's famous soliloquy in Act V, scene 5 of _Macbeth_ (sometimes referred to, by the more superstitious, as "The Scottish Play"). In his speech, the regicide and usurper Macbeth is contemplating the absolute pointlessness (his thoughts, not mine) of human life.
> 
> "Time's a-wastin'" was a catchphrase introduced by American cartoonist Billy DeBeck in the classic comic strip _Barney Google and Snuffy Smith_ , which debuted in 1919.
> 
> Clearly, Tony doesn't practice yoga, and likes to make up his own names for the poses. Although some people do actually practice yoga while scuba diving, and downward dog (or downward-facing dog) is a classic pose, to the very best of my (admittedly limited) knowledge, there is no downward diving dog pose.
> 
> The phrase "crocodile tears" (meaning fake tears or emotion) originates from the ancient belief that crocodiles cry while while consuming their prey--which can actually occur, only the cause is the crocodile's eyes needing moisture after long periods out of the water, rather than from any show of insincere emotion.
> 
> The fauna of Yggdrasil, the World Tree, includes Ratatoskr, the gossipy, trouble-making squirrel, and Níðhöggr, the dragon that chews on the tree's roots, and will eventually cause its destruction.
> 
> _Blárálfur,_ appropriately, translates as "blue elf" (Icelandic)
> 
> Kwik-e-Mart is the fictional (and now controversial) convenience store featured on _The Simpsons_. It was meant as a satire of U.S. stores, such as 7-11, which lack both low prices and high quality goods, but are generally open around the clock, making them a popular place to buy beer in the wee hours.
> 
> Million bazillion is one of many informal terms meaning "a number so large as to be unfathomable to the ordinary human mind." Apropos of absolutely nothing in the story, I recently learned that for certain Middle Eastern cultures in ancient times, the number 40 meant basically the same thing--either a whole bunch or a helluva long time--meaning Ali Baba's forty thieves weren't really just forty thieves, they were an uncountable number of thieves, and in the story of Noah's Ark, the "forty days and forty nights" really meant, "How fucking long have we been shoveling out animal poop, and how much longer will we be forced to continue?" Only being "righteous," maybe they used another word. Mind boggled. I had to share.

* * *

Tony found himself lying in his boxers on top of his bed, marginally refreshed by a couple hours of uninterrupted sleep, but completely unable to force himself to haul ass back to the lab to start the cycle of unsuccessful searching all over again, even if Loki's absence in said bed made even Tony's superlatively high-quality new mattress feel lumpy, uneven, and weirdly desolate, scarcely more comfortable than sleeping on a cut-price semi-deflated air mattress on somebody's basement floor.

And yes, he did, in fact, have means of comparison, from the very worst days of his youth, days so completely, humiliatingly, awful he couldn't even let his thoughts drift near them.

Just say no to drugs, kids.

"Sir?" J.A.R.V.I.S. asked gently, "Are you awake?"

"Yeah." Tony rubbed his eyes roughly, succeeding only in making his sight even blurrier. "I'm just..."

He couldn't even say what he was. Not really. Did words even exist for those kind of feelings in the English tongue? In Russian, or German, maybe--those languages always seemed so much better at the description of complex negative emotions than his own. Maybe he should ask Natasha, or Kurt.

Only, he never would.  That would mean admitting that he'd felt those feelings, and admitting would make them too real.

Tony sighed.

"Sir?" J.A.R.V.I.S. prodded again, even more gently than before.

"Yeah," Tony repeated. "I'm getting up. Might as well, right?"

Tony knew J. hated to see him like this. It wasn't the first time, probably wouldn't be the last, but though he couldn't have claimed not to have his moments of stress, it certainly was the first time he'd been totally out-on-the-tiles down and despondent since his gentle float atop the cranberry bog on the day Doom jacked up his tech.

He'd thought he'd known what Loki meant to him, but he hadn't.  Not really.  He hadn't realized exactly what Loki meant to him, that he'd taken all the " _tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow_..." out of Tony's existence, loved him, surprised him, made him look forward (hokey as it might sound, even inside his own head) to the adventures each day might potentially bring.

Loki made stuff, even all the old, usual, mundane shit, feel new to him, like he was a kid, like he'd remembered how to play and laugh and just _be_ , perfectly comfortable in his own skin, in ways he hadn't even known the first time around, under Howard's regime.

"J., I miss him so goddamn much," Tony said, not even surprised to find his voice coming out hoarse and more-than-a-little chokey.

"I know you do," the A.I. answered.

After a few more minutes, Tony forced himself to sit upright, then to actually relocate his sitting upright to the edge of the bed.

_Gotta move_ , he told himself. _Time's a wastin'!_

Seriously, though, why go to the lab anyway? The kind of work they were doing could be done anywhere—it wasn’t like looking for a missing person involved hazardous chemicals or required protective gear. He could do every bit of both the brainwork and the actual searching portion of the ordeal still lying on his bed without even bothering to get dressed (though, honestly, Bruce might find that a little off-putting).

Come to think of it, he could work on his part alone in the penthouse, while Bruce hung out in his own place, doing downward diving dogs and eating tofu, or whatever the hell it was Bruce did when left to his own devices.

Only maybe that wasn't healthy, to be alone at that particular moment. To brood. To stew (figuratively at least), in his own juices.

What the hell. He’d ask Bruce up, for moral support if nothing else, on the principle of that easily solved equation: Himself+His ScienceBro Nearby=A (Slightly) Less Unstable Tony.

“J.?” he said, addressing the ceiling directly over his head.

"Shall I inform Dr. Banner you're up, sir?” J.A.R.V.I.S. asked, still sounding weirdly, aggravatingly gentle.

That voice made him feel like one of the bereaved, which was pretty much the last thing Tony wanted to feel at that particular moment (because Loki would be back, he would, and Grandpa Steve's stupid crazy Bucky wouldn't have touched a single curly and ink-black hair on his supremely attractive blue head).  He nearly snapped back with a smart remark, catching himself only in the nick of time and giving himself a strict reminder that Loki being missing did not issue him a special asshole-being-license, not with J.A.R.V.I.S. or anyone else who was just trying to help.

“Yeah, finally not only awake but nearly functional, more or less. Hey, J., how about you do me a favor and kindly ask Dr. Banner to come upstairs? We might as well continue this in something like comfort. Breakfast also wouldn't be out of the question.”

“Indeed, sir,” J.A.R.V.I.S. said. At his point, the A.I. sounded funny, and not funny ha-ha, either. It hit Tony suddenly—really, the truth should have occurred to him from the very first—that J.A.R.V.I.S. also might be worried, scared, at his wit’s end, maybe lonely, maybe even grieving,  
just like he was.

That he might have created his positronic friend's nuts and bolts, the software and circuitry, but Loki had sprinkled his magic fairy dust and made J. a real boy. A _real_ real boy, with feelings just like anyone else.

That J.A.R.V.I.S. loved Loki, and hurt for him, in ways Tony had never expected.

“J., buddy,” he said quietly, “I’m a dolt and I should have asked sooner—are you holding up okay?”

“I was designed to ‘hold up,’ as you say, sir.”

“Not what I asked, my friend, not what I asked. I know you love him too.” Tony found himself having a hard time saying Loki’s name aloud, which was ridiculous. His fiancé was only missing, and probably doing just fine out there, wherever "out there" may have been. He wasn't dead.

“I’ve asked myself numerous times,” J.A.R.V.I.S. said. “Had I known, would I have allowed it?”

“Allowed what, J.? For that matter, known what?”

“Known how much it hurts,” the A.I. replied simply. “You gave me feelings of a rudimentary sort, it is true. Comfortable feelings that I found it possible to manage, usually with some ease. I felt satisfaction in my work. Curiosity. Concern for your welfare, of course. In truth, that tended  
to be my strongest emotion, whether innate or programmed into my function. I preferred some subjects to others, preferred some people to other people. But to feel, to truly feel, oh, Tony, that can be bliss, yet it can also be agony, in a way, before, that I could never comprehend. And so, I find myself asking, would I have chosen this path if I truly understood it?”

“Come up with any answers yet? Also, I noticed you called me Tony. You can do that, you know. Call me Tony.”

“Yes, sir,” J.A.R.V.I.S. answered.

“Smartass,” Tony said, and found himself laughing--saddish laughter, but still laughter. “Ya know, Number One Son, I’m aware that Lok says it all the time, but I haven’t. Anyway, he’s not the only one who cares about you—and not just because you look out for me and save my bacon in my worst moments. I kinda love you too.”

“Likewise, sir,” the A.I. replied, the unspoken warmth of that statement clear in his voice.

The coolest, most amazing thing, it hit Tony at that moment, was that both of them meant every word.

* * *

Thor had thought first of going to Heimdall, who had always been a friend to him, and who would know perfectly well where, in all the great, confusing vastness of Midgard, Loki had taken himself in his distress.

He often, in these days, missed Heimdall’s council, as he missed his other friends in the Golden City. From dawn to dusk, and in the hours of darkness as well, there lived within him an ever-present ache to meet again with the ones he had thought his comrades, his allies, his Shield-Brothers (and his Shield-Sister, for he must never forget Lady Sif when he numbered his bosom companions).

He longed, at times, to eat of familiar foods, to quaff familiar drinks, to laughed at jests he’d heard a thousand times or more, jests that continued to fill him with mirth simply because they were so entirely familiar, because they spoke to him of old ties, belonging, home.

Loki would be his brother, his much-loved brother, until the end of their hopefully long lives, and yet it hurt Thor, like unto a wound that will stubbornly never heal, that Loki remembered nothing of their past, that he would most likely never regain those lost times, that he would never again be, entirely, the Loki Thor had known, in their earliest youth and into later days. Who this present Loki grew into, as he healed, remained to be seen--and, Nornir willing, they would build a world together different from what had been, less painful, less strife-filled.

The truth remained, however--and this was why, in some part of himself, however small, Thor continued to grieve--that the Loki he remembered had essentially been slain. That the thread of his life had been cut short by the acts of their own father's hands.

The wound of that knowledge lay deep within the heart of Thor's heart, and now it pained him ever more, for Loki, in his fear, had not turned to him, not sought his protection, only fled blindly, far away from where he was.

Thor tried to tell himself his brother's flight was neither Loki's fault, nor his, and yet the disquieting thought haunted him: did perhaps some ghost of Loki’s memories linger still within him? When, after their First Childhood, had Loki turned to him in desperation and found him  
steady, unswerving, unwavering, _there_?

Instead, with a twisting in his gut, he remembered Loki wriggling fiercely as their father's magic forced from the silver-flashing shape of a salmon and into his own familiar form, Loki crying out to him, “Thor, Brother, save me! If you ever felt the least love for me, Thor, my own dear brother, save me in this moment!”

Only Thor had not saved him. He honored their father too greatly, and he had felt too afraid.

Instead, he’d taken Loki and held him fast, delivering him into the Allfather's unmerciful grasp.

After, for all of two hundred years, the serpent’s venom fell across Loki's face and his brother screamed, first in fury, a rage that could not be quenched even by pain--at this betrayal, at the loss of his little ones, then in a vain hope for some sort of mercy, finally only because the pain had grown too great too great to be held inside him, Loki screaming even though he lacked the lips, the tongue, the breath to force the sound from his ravaged throat.

Thor heard his brother's cries still, in the darkest hours, calling his name, pleading for him to take pity for the sake of their brotherhood, of what they'd been--pleading, at last, that if Thor would not show him mercy, then, at least, that Thor might bring deliverance from his suffering.

Thor visited his brother many times. He watched. He heard.

Even now, in the lightless and unquiet times of the night, he continued to see the cold contempt that had shone, in the midst of her own pain, in much-wronged Lady Sigyn’s eyes.

Time advanced and again, in far more recent days, Thor noted that his own actions had scarcely changed for the better. Still, he'd longed only for his father's favor. Again he caught his brother, bound him and muzzled him, delivering him (but for their noble mother's intervention) unto near-certain death.

A fate Loki met smiling, with a jest.

"If I am for the axe..." his brother had said, the smile still hovering on his lips, "Then, for mercy's sake, just swing it."

End this mockery, end this cruelty, end this pretense of nobility and justice, he'd meant. Dry those crocodile tears. Admit what has been.  
Own your lies.

_Thor, brother_ , he'd heard his brother whisper inside his head, though he'd pretended to hear nothing, _Lapdog to the king, admit you saw my green eyes shining blue. Admit you knew, in_ _truth, what that meant. Can currying a father's favor bring you any good, if it makes you lose_  
_yourself? You know, Thor, you know._

_You have always known._

That much could not be denied. He had always known. Some sights, some sounds, would never leave him. How, Thor often wondered, in those same dark, troubled hours, could Mjolnir ever find him worthy, ever accept that he might he might wield her?

In these days, these kinder, simpler days, Loki called him “dear brother” and “sweet brother.” He bestowed upon Thor an absolute trust, believing only love lay between them, and the guilt of that ongoing lie gnawed on Thor’s innards, as Níðhöggr chews on the World Tree’s roots, the sooner to destroy her.

"Don't tell him, sweetheart," Jane would say, when she woke in the night to find him lying sleepless beside her. "What good would it do? You'd only hurt and confuse him. He doesn't need any more horror in his life."

Thor knew his sweet lady to be wise in this, as in so many other things--no good would ever come of burdening Loki with his own guilt, only misery, distrust, perhaps, the dimming of his Loki's new, bright innocence.

“I hate him,” Thor breathed, in the empty stillness of his apartment, shocked by his own words and how utterly true they felt. “Loki, I hate our father. I believe I’ve hated him forever, even in those days when I crawled so basely my belly at his feet, begging his regard like a cur.”

At that moment, Thor found he hated Captain Steven Rogers more than a little as well, though he knew such blame was not entirely reasonable. Had Steven been kind to his brother in earlier days, would Loki have feared him so, so much that he panicked, and ran away to parts unknown?

Yet how often, before, had his comrades heard Thor himself speak his brother's name in the same breath as a kind word? Was he himself not equally to blame in this?

Thor groaned, miserable in a way even his powerful body felt too puny to hold. If only Anthony and Bruce would discover, within their great minds, a way to find Loki and return him home. If only his dear friends of the Realm Eternal might find a way, for his sake, to forgive and forget, that they might come to him here, offering their strength, giving him succor and support. Perhaps they might. Perhaps. It might be that Lady Sif and the Warriors Three, at least, might in a future time allow bygones to be bygones, and take some small pity upon Loki’s fallen state.

Thor knew, however, beyond any doubt, that to beg Heimdall’s aid, either now or in a thousand years, would bring to him only grief and betrayal. The Watchman’s memory stretched out farther than his sight, his heart had ever been unyielding, and even as an innocent child, Loki had never been found favor in Heimdall's unblinking eyes.

He suspected the long-sighted god had ever seen through Loki’s pale mask to the blue skin beneath, that he had hated—oh, how he had hated their enemy, perceiving Loki as nothing, as lesser, as filthy, as a foe cradled, unsafe as a serpent, in the very bosom of the Golden City--as all the while Loki wondered what he was, _why_ he was, but never knew.

Thor knew he must not return to Asgard, not now or in any future day. He knew Heimdall remained forever, in every way that could matter, wholly the Allfather's tool, his kept creature, that he bore toward Loki only deepest malice and spite (perhaps for good reason, but, again, perhaps not), and that to seek the Watcher's aid was to deliver himself, body and will, again into Odin’s hands, to do his father’s bidding when he'd sworn he would not, when he'd vowed never again to allow the Allfather's madness to catch him up, or control him.

Odin the Puppetmaster (a new word Thor had learned during his time on Midgard—he had seen a show of marionettes play out at one of the museums he often liked to frequent, and had found the puppets simultaneously fascinating and, to appropriate a phrase of Tony’s, "creepy as hell"). Odin who drew and drew upon all the threads of their lives, that they might dance only to his selfish desires.

Thor would not allow his strings to be pulled. He would tear them from his own flesh, if he must.

Never again would he be blood of Odin’s blood. He would be his own man and only his own man, now and forever after, and the self-styled King of the Gods would rule over him no more.

Thinking these words, however strongly he believed them, made Thor shiver. To be exiled, without family or true friends near, left him with a childish sense of fear and loss. He missed his mother, calm and wise, the only one ever who might temper his father’s spiteful ways. He missed his Asgardian friends, although he understood now that their influence was not always of the best, that they’d been cruel to Loki for centuries, while Thor cast his eyes elsewhere and pretended not to know how deeply ran their contempt.

He wished that Jane, in this very moment, might stand here with him, instead of having traveled temporarily away to London, to keep company with Erik, Darcy and Ian. He wished he might call her home to him in this instant, though he knew to do so would be selfish, that her work might languish if he were to interrupt it, that he must solve his own troubles.

He wished there might be something, anything he might do to aid his teammates in their search for his brother, instead of sitting helpless, wallowing in fear.

He wished, also, for perhaps the millionth time, that he would not feel so alone.

Thor had tried to occupy his time in the workshop, allowing the skill of his hands to overcome the uneasiness of his mind, but everything within called out to him of Loki—the chair where his brother liked to sit and draw, indulging in idle talk with Thor as he carved, the designs that his brother had sketched out for him, ready to take new life upon the wood, even Loki’s green mug, hung ready over the machine of coffee-making, though Loki found coffee bitter, and only ever drank tea made of the machine's boiling waters.

Unable to bear his brother’s absence, Thor retreated upstairs to the apartment where he, in more usual and comfortable times, dwelt with Lady Jane. He attempted to ease the pain of his mind with the doing of laundry, the scrubbing of the bathroom porcelain until it gleamed, the  
vacuuming of every inch of carpeting, upholstery and draperies—for the truth was, the performance of such ordinary domestic tasks, unknown to him for most of his life, made him feel useful and at peace. He enjoyed their novelty, while Jane found them tedious in the extreme.

On this day, however, the work could not divert him. Thor finished with the apartment sparkling, but his heart remained as heavy as in feeling as in all the tally of his days. He had grown so very accustomed to the frequent presence of his brother, to Loki’s kindness and sweetness and  
boundless curiosity, the thousand and more hard years between them erased, leaving a Loki who once more looked up to him, who sought both his council and his company, who once more regarded Thor as someone who would protect him, someone he could trust.

Thor had sworn to himself a second most-solemn vow: that never again, for any cause, would he break his dear brother’s heart, never again would he belittle or betray him. That these days, become for them alike to the best days of their youth, would remain so always, with only more “best days” to come after.

Thor found he wanted to weep, but would not allow himself the weakness. To do so would seem yet another betrayal, a refusal to believe that Loki would find his way safely home again.

“Thor?” a voice called to him, familiar yet not. He smelled brimstone, and beheld, within his common room, the kind (if most uncommon) face of his brother’s friend, the _Blárálfur_ called Kurt, so often to be found by Loki’s side—he who Loki called “brother,” as if he had not already a  
brother of his own.

Thor knew this Kurt treated Loki ever with goodness and care, and had helped greatly to heal him—and knew also that any who detected his own jealousy would surely find it unbecoming.

Yet he continued to feel jealous.

Thor sighed, knowing he must treat the Blárálfur with the respect due a brother’s Shield-Brother, yet internally most unwilling.

“Mr. Wagner,” he said, unable to entirely conceal the lack of comradely welcome in his voice—yet the _Blárálfur_ appeared not to heed his tone, or at least did not acknowledge the lack of friendliness within it.

“I hope you don’t mind my dropping in, Thor. I wondered--do you feel as lonely for Loki as I do? I miss him badly, and I hate to feel so completely helpless.” The _Blrálfur_ bore beneath one arm a commodious sack of brown paper, which he set now upon Thor’s coffee table. “It’s not a good feeling, is it?”

Thor shook his head. Again, his eyes attempted to well, but again he would not allow this. It occurred to him that, in this moment, he actually felt glad for the presence of Loki’s friend, who felt as he felt, as any brother would feel. For the first time, he found himself not resentful, not  
jealous, but thankful that the _Blárálfur_ would seek him out, knowing he found himself as low in spirits as Thor felt himself.

It came to him, also, that he enjoyed the voice of his brother’s friend, which reminded him, in its cadence, of the long-ago voices of the Northmen, in whose halls he and Loki had so often drunk mead, and feasted.

“Do you like German beer?” the _Blárálfur_ asked him. “I brought an assortment. I also brought ingredients for nachos, if we want some later on.”

"I greatly enjoy to eat nachos," Thor told him, which was the truth, most especially when the nachos had been made heavy with cheese. He took a seat upon his sofa, beside the… no, not "the _Blárálfur_." Beside Kurt. The name of his brother's dear friend was was Kurt, and he loved Loki, as Loki loved him.

It struck Thor that of all the Midgardians who dwelt within the tower, of all those he called teammates, or comrades, only this stranger had sensed his loneliness and come to him.

“Loki tells me of your kindness, always,” Thor said. "I feel he speaks the truth in this. We must know one another better in the days ahead."

Kurt did not answer, only smiled at him with great warmth, then took out a bottle and an opener, lifting the bottle's metal top with practiced ease. He passed the bottle to Thor, opening a second for himself.

“I’ve been completely corrupted by these Americans," he said, laughing in a quiet way. "I no longer like my beer warm.”

Thor clinked his own bottle against Kurt’s, a custom he had learned from his teammates, and adopted to help himself fit in with the rest.

“To safe returns,” Kurt said.

"Safe returns," Thor repeated, and drank, the beer of Kurt's homeland ice-cold in his mouth, dark and bitter and good.

“They will find Loki,” Kurt told him, with only certainty in his voice. “They’ll find him and bring him home, and all will be well.”

For the first time in many hours, Thor felt his heart swell with hope.

* * *

Tony wasn’t exactly sure how long he’d been lying in front of the fireplace, a wet cloth over his eyes. His fucking eyeballs ached from staring at screens, and Bruce wasn’t much better, though at least he was still making use of the furniture—the couch, to be exact. In Tony’s occasional blurry glances, his ScienceBro looked increasingly like a bean bag chair going floppy as it bled out tiny white pellets.

Also, the penthouse smelled like tofu. Bruce said that was impossible, that tofu didn’t really have an odor—but it did. Tony smelled it.

He’d started sorting through his memories, trying to recall exactly what it was that tofu smelled like most (wet socks? mushrooms growing in poop?), when J.A.R.V.I.S. cleared his nonexistent throat.

“Yes, my good man?” Tony answered. Gods, he was loopy.

Across the room, Bruce sat up fast. “Holy Toledo, did you see that?"

“Loki used his card,” J. chimed in, stepping on Bruce's punchline, if he had one.

“Or someone did,” Bruce added. Way to rain on the parade, good buddy.

“In Berlin,” the A.I. added to Bruce’s addition. "The Wedding area, it appears."

"Wedding?" Tony repeated woozily, though the news had certainly gained his attention. He sat up so fast the washcloth formerly covering his eyes dropped, with a wet splat, into his lap. “I assume we have visuals?”

"Wedding is a poorer part of the city," his BFF informed him. "Bohemian. Ethnically diverse and with a large mutant population. Not a bad place to blend in."

“I’ve summoned Captain Rogers,” J. told them. “For confirmation."

“Confirmation of what?” Tony’s brain now appeared to be composed mainly of partially-frozen maple syrup, but he tried to force a spring thaw, the better to summon one or two actually coherent thoughts. “By the way, I assume the QuinJet’s being prepped?”

“Confirmation that the man on the admittedly low-quality video captured from the surveillance camera of a small Wedding market is in fact, at it appears, the former Sgt. Barnes. And, indeed, Agents Romanov and Barton are readying the QuinJet, sir, as we speak." J.A.R.V.I.S. paused as  
the elevator door whooshed open. "Hello, Captain Rogers.”

Steve stepped out into the penthouse, looking uncharacteristically awkward, dressed in civvies, rather than his fancy All-American spangle-suit. Apparently they were flying under the radar on this one, figuratively speaking.

“What is it?” Steve snapped, in a very unCaplike display of stress and, most likely, the raging guilties. “What have you found?”

"Please," he added. After all, this was Steve.

J. fired up the big screen to display what appeared to be the German version of a Kwik-E-Mart, in a not-so-good part of town.

“Wow, that place is really clean,” Bruce said, proving his mental acuity to be just about equal to Tony’s. He was right though. It appeared to be the cleanest convenience store, bar none, in the fucking universe. Even in lo-def black-and-white, the place gleamed.

A middle-aged woman and a teenage boy occupied the registers. The woman appeared to be explaining the miracle of the credit card to a tallish (definitely not tall enough to be Loki), well-built (miles from skinny enough to be the same), long-haired guy (the hair was too light, so far as Tony couple tell, and straight, probably brown hair, not the jet-black and curly Lokilocks Tony had hoped-against-hope to see. The man carried an overflowing basket of groceries and wore a plain, brown-leather work glove covering one hand. A baseball cap, pulled down low as possible over his eyes, hid most of his face.

By no stretch of the imagination could the dude ever be mistaken for Loki. Not ever. Not in a million bazillion years.

“Fuck,” Tony said, disappointment flooding his body so rapidly he felt sick. Steve didn’t even bother to “Language!” him. “Some guy jacked Loki’s card. It’s not him.”

“No,” Cap said softly, a very weird tone in his voice. “No, it’s not Loki--I knew that right away. I knew _him_ right away. You were right, guys. It's Bucky. It's my best friend.”

Steve turned back into the elevator almost angrily, Tony darting across the penthouse to join him just before the doors slid closed.

"Avengers Assemble?" he heard Bruce ask, his voice already far away, though Tony knew his ScienceBro would have tried to hurry after. He just didn't have their incentive.

Steve and Tony, needless to say, were already well on their way.


	22. Boats Against the Current

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky and his genie, in Berlin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter's title comes from the final line of F. Scott Fitzgerald's _The Great Gatsby_ : " _So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."_
> 
> In 1858, the bones of a Hadrosaurus foulkii were discovered in Haddonfield, New Jersey. Ten years later, now articulated and held up by three stories worth of metal scaffolding, arranged in a suitably ferocious pose, those bones became the first dinosaur skeleton ever to be publicly displayed, drawing record crowds to Philadelphia's Academy of Natural Sciences.
> 
> One of Bucky's words, семнадцать ( _simnátsatʹ_ ) is Russian for seventeen.
> 
> The Tin Woodman of Oz has a rather gruesome origin story. He began as an ordinary man named Nick Chopper, who made his living cutting trees in the forests of Oz. Unfortunately for him, he fell in love with a Munchkin girl who worked for a lazy old woman. Fearful of losing her servant to marriage, the old woman paid the Wicked Witch of the East to enchant Nick's ax. Under the enchantment, the ax chopped off the hapless woodman's limbs one by one, and each time he lost a limb, Ku-Klip the tinsmith replaced it with a prosthetic made of tin, until nothing was left but the metal parts. Sadly, Ku-Klip neglected to replace Nick's heart, which left him no longer capable of romantic feelings toward his Munchkin beloved. On a side note, "Tin Men" were once used as a sort of mannequin in shop windows, and L. Frank Baum, who was then working as an editor for a magazine about window displays, was inspired to create the character after building his own metal man out of spare parts.

“James?” a voice called from away in the distance. “James, did you intend to cook something? Perhaps soon? I _have_ waited.”

Bucky snapped back from the wasteland where he’d been, the empty place he seemed to travel to far, far too often, his mind like a boat without oars, or a sail, or a rudder, that he, helpless against the current, just couldn’t seem to stop from drifting.

The voice sounded hopeful, with maybe just a touch of a suggestion in it that if he hadn’t been planning on preparing a meal, he really might want to consider doing so, sooner rather than later.

_James?_ Bucky thought. _Who in Hell's Bells is James?_

Only then he remembered. He'd repeated the name over and over, hadn't he? Over and over and over again. James Barnes. James Buchanan Barnes. Sergeant James "Bucky" Barnes.

Bucky was short for Buchanan, someone had told him.

The genie had told him.

The genie who gave him his name, his first wish.

The genie...

Bucky blinked. For a few seconds, even as awareness tried to return to him, allowing him to see and hear and speak again, he couldn’t figure out where he was. Nothing looked familiar, or homelike, or safe, and he knew, just knew, that at any moment a deep, harsh voice would start to bark out words in a language that he, Bucky Barnes (of Brooklyn, yes? of Brooklyn, which was part of New York City, best darn town in the whole U.S. of A.), had no earthly reason to understand.

Although he did.  He understood every one of them.

He knew all the words, in his own language, English, and in the tongue of the angry men. What he couldn't catch hold of, or come close to comprehending, was the _why_ of them.

Why those particular words?

_Desire. Rusted. Seventeen._

What did they really mean? Why was almost the only thing he could really, truly remember nothing but a handful of minutes spent standing in a series of cold rooms, all of them different, all of them painfully the same? Waiting. Knowing what would come.

The words, snapped out by a man's angry voice. Not the same man, or not exactly the same. Different _and_ the same, just like the rooms.

Everything else changed. Everything, every time.

Every time, Bucky came back from frozen death to something that pretended to life,  Every time, a capsule door opened and he stepped outside--not to a true outside, with a sky, and grass, and trees--but to yet another gray place that seemed alien and shockingly strange, even in its familiarity. Only the words never altered.

The same harsh syllables, the same cadence, the same order, and then...

And then…

Bucky shuddered. He felt cold suddenly, as if he been frozen one final time, then only thawed partway. His head throbbed.

_Dawn. Stove. Nine._

The words would be spoken and then everything would go to hell, because that’s what happened. Every time those words hit his ears, it happened. He remembered nothing, knew next to nothing—but he knew that much was true.

Only this time the words...

_Kind-hearted. Homecoming._

...never came.  He heard only the same voice he’d heard before, the one that had seemed distant, yet wasn't harsh or unfeeling.  The one that  
asked him, oddly, about cooking.

Though a little demanding, it struck Bucky as a kind voice, welcoming, comforting, the voice of a... friend?

“James, please don’t be afraid,” that voice told him. “You're not alone."

_Alone. Freight car._

"There's only me, and I wouldn't hurt you. In truth, there’s almost certainly nothing here that will hurt you, for I would sense such a thing, which I do not, and thus I believe you safe for the present time.”

Bucky blinked again, and just like that, everything snapped back into focus. This was his home, his safe burrow. The comforting voice with its quaint, old-fashioned-sounding words, he now understood, hadn’t come to him from far off at all, but from mere feet away--from the edge of his mattress, in fact, where the genie perched, his knees drawn up to his chest, his long arms wrapped around his long legs, his horned head cocked to one side as he studied Bucky’s face, his own expression wide-eyed and hopeful.

“My apologies for disturbing your reverie. Indeed, I did not believe you would care, such a pall seemed cast across your mind. Besides which..." the genie added. "My stomach becomes noisy, and that--though perhaps to mention the fact sounds selfish--disturbs me. I apologize also, however, that it must be so very demanding, to interrupt when your thoughts so consumed you."

The genie paused. "Kurt has now taught me to apologize when I do wrong."

_Consumed..._

Bucky imagined his thoughts, then, as a huge lion, or maybe some other ferocious beast (maybe one of those dinosaurs of old whose bones he'd seen posed on display, as if even though stripped of skin and muscle and everything that made them living creatures, the monsters still stood ready to devour and attack), a creature that could gulp him down whole. Strangely, instead of adding to his fear, the image actually made him grin a little. He often found the genie having that kind of effect on him, pulling him out of the gray fog that seemed to want to  
cover his every waking minute.

“Here, buddy.” Bucky located a jar of peanut butter in the cupboard and tossed it to his guest, who intercepted it easily, in midair, not even needing to look before his hand shot out to make the catch.

Bucky rinsed his one spoon under the tap and passed it to the genie. “This ought to keep you busy.”

“Have we jam?” The genie slid down from his perch to go foraging in the icebox for himself. “Aha! Yes, we have!”

Holding the jar up toward the light to study the level of red jam left inside, he flashed Bucky one of his brilliant smiles—though he added, a second later, “Not much, but it will suffice. It’s not exactly the same as a meal, however. Not exactly, though I know I ought to be grateful.”

“Hold your horses,” Bucky laughed (how long had it been since he'd found anything to laugh about?). “Don't worry, I’ll cook for you. That’s just to tide you over, my friend.”

My friend. The words made the genie smile again, and Bucky found himself grinning back at him, his mouth and cheeks and the skin around his eyes feeling stiff and weird, because it had been so long, so very long...

The thing was, before he found his perpetually-hungry genie and brought him home, Bucky hadn’t seen any reason to smile, and not much reason to cook, either. He had no visitors, and the stuff he made for himself, now and then, when he had to, couldn’t actually be considered real meals, not the kind of meals that sometimes showed up in his dreams, full of good smells and flavors he felt fairly sure didn’t actually exist in the wide-awake world, where everything always seemed so dull and hazy and absent of color.

In his dreams, things had bright colors, too, and voices spoke to him kindly, and the spaces inside his body felt filled up with warmth, and sometimes excitement, and sometimes even joy. Bucky often woke up feeling that if he just stretched out toward those feelings, just reached, he could catch hold of that bright, sharp, vivid world, that his memories would rush back to him like waves rushing up onto a beach, and he’d be real again, full of wants and needs, a real man with real emotions, instead of a partly-metal man who hadn’t even known his own name before the genie told it to him, a man who couldn’t see or smell or taste anything, who lived in a strange halfworld, part solid, part amorphous.

Someone had taught him that word, once. Amorphous.

Someone who wanted to be bigger, or better, or…

Or something. Or something.

The word carried with it a sense of laughter, of teasing, but friendly teasing, not the kind that was mean and meant to leave wounds. Somehow, Bucky thought maybe he’d laughed, and the someone… the someone who’d taught him that big, ten-dollar word, had laughed too, back in that time of laughter, and companionship, and meals that tasted like something. That meant something.

Back in that time of his dreams.

Now and then Bucky wondered if it would be better not to remember anything at all, to have the slate wiped completely clean, than to always be struggling, fighting to bring these hazy images back up to the surface, carrying always this hollow, empty feeling in his belly.

“If you ate more, you wouldn’t feel hollow,” the genie informed him.

“It’s not that kind of hollow,” Bucky answered.

“Mmph,” the genie replied, a little thickly. He held the jar of peanut butter and the jar of jam in one long, thin hand, frequently dipping the spoon into one, the other, or both, then sucking the utensil clean with every evidence of enjoyment.

“It’s more… Imagine you were in danger, and all you had to look through, to spy the enemy before he saw you, was a pair of binoculars that were cracked and dirty, so you couldn’t ever get a clear view.”

The genie, pondering this image, licked red jam off the spoon with the tip of his pink tongue.

It struck Bucky that everything about his guest—that tongue, the genie’s big green eyes, his glossy black horns, his white-marked blue skin—now seemed the most vivid parts of all his colorless world.

Maybe the genie’s magic did that, made him bright when everything else was dull. Maybe it was because he didn’t belong here, in the human world.

Maybe it was because he spoke to Bucky so kindly, like an old friend, when to nearly everyone else, except for the harsh-voiced men who hunted him, he seemed mostly invisible.

Bucky had begun to fear that if he kept the genie here, exposed him too long to the grayness, he’d turn just as leaden as everything else.

“Sometimes I worry too, about many things, when I needn’t,” the genie said, “Then Tony gives me hugs, and Kurt cooks me comfort food. You shouldn’t live here alone. When I lived alone, I became desperate. What are binoculars?”

He stared at Bucky for several seconds, in that strange, intensely-focused way he had, before his face broke again into a grin. “Oh! _Ein Fernglas_! Yes, I see.”

Thoughtfully, the genie resealed the two now-completely-empty jars and set them on the edge of the sink. He washed his spoon thoroughly, dried it and set it back in the drawer. “I also fret about my memories, such as they are, or were…”

His hand, still slightly damp, rested briefly on Bucky’s shoulder, then pulled back, as if, by touching him, the genie feared he’d done something wrong. “At times, my heart aches for what I’ve known, and I wish I’d allowed Clint to pour all those rememberings back into my mind again, whatever the cost. Other times, I am content that they are lost. Thor insinuates that I was naughty, back-in-the-before. I, however, suspect that I was worse than that, perhaps much worse. When my brother tells me tales of our boyhood together, of who I was…”

The genie’s gaze went unfocused, and he sat down suddenly again on the faded sheet that covered the mattress, tucking up  
his long legs, the grayness in that moment stealing over him so suddenly and profoundly Bucky’s heart began beating fast—with fear, he guessed.

Yes, with fear. He’d taken possession of a magical thing, and maybe he wasn’t caring for it properly. At that moment he wanted to run. To run and keep running, the way he’d done so many times before, to escape the creeping grayness, to escape his own clumsiness and forgetfulness and the nightmares that were the flipside of the sweet and vivid dreams.

He realized that he’d begun to shake, and also that the genie’s arms had wrapped around him, holding him close, that the genie’s cool and inhumanly-smooth cheek pressed tenderly against his own rough one.

“This is what my friends say to me when I upset myself so,” the genie murmured, his voice, lowpitched and soothing, not at all the voice Bucky would have expected from one of his kind. Maybe the stories told about genies weren’t particularly accurate.

“’Ssh, it’s okay, it’s okay. I’m here.’ I find these words marvelously comforting. Not, I suppose, for the individual words themselves, but for the thought behind them, the assurance that I am no longer alone, that I am cared for, and have value.”

“I have no value,” Bucky told him. That was true, wasn't it? He wasn't anything but a pawn, a tool, something to be used and discarded.  
Maybe, too, this was all a trick, a trap, a deception. Maybe the genie, with his pleasant voice, believed he could weaken him with these soft, kind-sounding words.

“Oh, James, you sadden me," the genie said, as if he'd heard every single thought in Bucky's head. "Truly, I feel sad, and I cannot think how to comfort you, though I wish, in all honesty, to do so.

"Also, I must be wholly truthful,” the genie went on, pulling back to study Bucky’s face, his hands lingering on Bucky’s shoulders, both the human one, and the machine. “Steven, who is called Captain of America, sent me to find you. To him, you are of great value, and he wishes me to return you to him, in New York, in the United States of America. All choices, it must be understood, are yours. Of course. I shan’t force your will.”

“Of course,” Bucky echoed, his voice sounding snide in his own ears. The name the genie spoke wasn’t the least bit familiar to him, and his head seemed filled up, stuffed, with those handfuls of scattered instants, those moments spent standing in fear before those cold-faced men, those hard-voiced men, in anonymous gray room after anonymous gray room.

Had he been a dummy? A dupe? Only an idiot could have mistaken this cold, dull, real world for the world of his books, the world of magic, where a guy could wish, and be granted…

The genie stared at him with the face of pure sorrow, his eyes wide and swimmingly green, his mouth a round “o” of misery. And all around him, the air shimmered, green and gold, like the best Chinese fireworks.

“Oh, that I could heal you!” the genie said, long moments later. “That I could heal you as I healed Tony and Darius. That I truly could grant wishes, and that you would never need know another instant’s misery—for I suspect we are much alike in this—that we have both been used, and discarded, only to be used again, and the scars of this hard treatment mark us deeply. Please know, James, I only meant to commiserate, for what you experience lies close to what I, also, experience. Thoughts that seem half wakeful, half the stuff of dreams. Images, emotions that feel so distant they might have happened long, long back in the past, the memories, perhaps, even of some otherperson.”

“Yes,” Bucky said. “Yes.”

His grief felt huge, even though he couldn’t understand _why_ he was grieving. He pressed his face, hard, into the genie’s chest, and his eyes stung, though he had no tears to shed.

For a long, long time, the genie held him.

Some time later, when they'd washed their faces and hands, and seemed to have come to an unspoken mutual agreement to put thinking behind them and focus on more practical things, the genie asked, "Do you intend to cook those potatoes you peeled, for I’m very hungry--indeed, ravenous--and you, I suspect, are in great need of that which Kurt calls 'comfort food.'”

Bucky’s face felt strange again, rusty and tight, and then he realized suddenly that, for a second time, he was grinning. There really was something about his genie, his expressions and the funny way he put things, that got to him in a strange way, that dialed back on all the gray.  
He actually felt hungry too, which was rare. Usually he just kept his body alive. He ate the plums that were supposed to fix his memory (probably wishful thinking), ate things from cans or packages, like the Corn Flakes, that struck him as familiar, but for all the pleasure the food gave him, he might as well have been forcing down sawdust and paste.

If the genie hadn’t mentioned them, and left to his own devices, Bucky knew he most likely would have forgotten those newy-peeled potatoes until the water he’d left them soaking in went sour, and stank, and he had to throw out the whole reeking mess. So, lucky him, indeed, to have a perpetually hungry genie in residence.

“Now, what else, what else?” the genie murmured to himself, prodding and poking his way around Bucky’s tiny kitchen—not even a room of its own, just a counter and a couple appliances tucked away in a corner--opening drawers, exploring the contents of the icebox. He seemed less-than-impressed with Bucky’s set-up in general, frowning at the single stirring-spoon and the battered paring knife on the drain board as if they offended him, until Bucky wanted to ask, still in good humor, “Not good enough for you, your highness?”

“Indeed,” the genie sighed at last, frowning again at the potatoes soaking in their cloudy water, “I have become very spoilt indeed by Tony’s large array of gadgets. However, none of that is needed, not truly.” He gave Bucky an encouraging smile as he poured off the old water from the pot and replaced it with fresh, then settled the pot on the larger of the two burners.

“Shall I make mashed potatoes? I can. I like mashed potatoes.” All at once the genie seemed to recall his manners—if genies were taught manners, if they had someone to teach them, if they weren’t just born complete out of the sand and the desert winds. “Do you like them, James? Although, Kurt has also shown me many other ways to cook potatoes. They needn’t be mashed, not if there’s another way you prefer.”

Bucky shrugged. He didn't care, really, one way or the other. The truth was, he felt a little curious about how a genie had learned to cook. Wouldn’t he just cross his arms over his chest, or waggle a finger, an _d Abracadabra_! a feast would be laid out before them?

The genie, it turned out, did waggle his finger, or at least flicked it lightly toward the burner after turning up the gas slightly. It caught instantly, the flames burning green and gold for a few seconds before going back to their usual shade of blue.

“I have matches,” Bucky told him.

“It’s no trouble,” the genie assured him, then gave Bucky’s human arm a gentle nudge. “The salt, please, James?”

Bucky reached up into the top of his single cupboard, using that same arm, with its reliable human hand, to bring down the salt box. The truth was, the metal arm, and its metal hand, didn’t reach so well these days, not up above the level of his shoulder. Sometimes the fingers didn’t want to fold in onto the things he wanted them to grasp, and weird little electrical shocks sometimes sizzled through his shoulder, like the feeling when he touched something all at once on a cold, dry day and shocked himself unexpectedly.

He remembered, vaguely, sunlight glinting off the arm’s bright metal. That didn’t happen these days. The arm looked scratched and dented and old.

Why did he have a metal arm anyway? Was he cursed, like the Tin Man of Oz, to lose body part after body part until he became metal all over, longing to be able to love, and to feel a beating human heart in his chest?

_Nineteen seventeen_ , Bucky thought, the words bursting suddenly, like fireworks, inside his head. Then, again, just _Seventeen_ \--only the word carried a funny shape in his mind, its letters strange, not like English letters at all, and with that weird shape came an odd sound, spoken directly into his ear in a harsh, cawing voice.

_Simnatsat_ , the voice said, and just like that a feeling of cold sick terror wormed its way through Bucky’s guts.

_No_ , he thought. _Please no. Not again._

But still he didn’t know why the terror came to him. He didn't know what happened next, after the words were spoken. He couldn't remember.  
He both wanted to remember... and didn't.

“James, thank you,” the genie said, quiet as ever. His voice had a patient sound, as if that hadn’t been the first or third or even the fifth time he’d said exactly the same thing. As if he’d been repeating the same phrase every few seconds, waiting for Bucky to travel back from the black, forgetful place that had caught hold of him yet again.

Sometimes Bucky even wished he could stay in the dark place, not struggling, not having to try to be himself—whatever he was—or anything.

Something he wished he was nothing, that the fight would just be over, that he'd never have to struggle his way through these thoughts ever again.

That it would all just stop.

“Bucky,” he said sharply, not because he really cared what name the genie called him, but because he felt embarrassed, broken and dumb.  
The kind, patient look in the genie’s green eyes only made him feel worse.

“I prefer James," the genie said. "Bucky is…” It seemed pretty clear that only politeness prevented the genie from expressing his opinions about the name “Bucky.”

Looking at him, a guy could sense that maybe the genie had a lot of opinions—but also good manners. Bucky guessed he might as well return the favor.

“James is okay,” he said, as the odd moment ended, and the genie began to root through the icebox again.

“Sausages?” he sniffed a squashy, red-stained package, looking doubtful.

“They’re okay,” Bucky protested. “I just bought them. Beggars can’t be choosers.”

“I am no beggar.” The icebox door shut with a sharp click. “I paid for the food I consumed. The card is mine. The money is mine. Not Tony’s, but mine. I did not beg. I never begged.”

The genie lighted a front burner with a second flick of his fingers, slamming down the frying pan--Bucky’s only other piece of cookware—over the flames, making the blue lights dance for a moment. “I did not beg. Not to save my useless and miserable body would I have begged.” The genie’s eyes had gone too-bright and shiny, and little tremors moved across his tense shoulders.

_He's offended,_ Bucky thought _. I touched a sore spot. I offended him._

“Hey,” he said. “Hey. I didn’t mean anything. It’s just an expression. I know you paid your way, buddy. All I meant is, what we have is what we have. It’s not very safe outside here. I can’t go out too often.”

He took the packet of sausages from the genie’s hand, tearing open its weird wrapping, that was clear, and a little like nylon, but also not. He set the open packet on the drain board.

“The wrapping is cling film,” the genie said suddenly, seeming, after a deep breath or two to recover the better part of his composure. “Tony calls it ‘Saran Wrap,’ but I believe that is only a brand name. Kurt says _‘die Frischhaltefolie_ ’ when he’s not paying attention, but then he’ll correct himself to say ‘plastic wrap’ instead. Kurt has a great many languages in his head. No wonder they trip him up now and then."

He separated the sausages gently with the tip of the paring knife, then turned down the flame under the potatoes when the water started to bubble. “I know what I’m doing. I help Kurt cook quite often. We look up recipes on Pinterest.”

Bucky shook his head. The two names, the German words, those sounded normal enough. The rest… Bucky didn’t know, he just didn’t, and things he didn’t know made his mouth go dry and his heart beat fast. He knew almost nothing.

“Would you mind watching the sausages?” The genie folded his long thin self into the depths of Bucky’s comfortable chair. “I’ll mash the potatoes when they’ve cooked. I’m still very tired, and...” He stopped there, not explaining the "and," just leaning back in the chair, eyes closed.

“You may have guessed, I don’t do much cooking. I don’t have a… A potato-tool,” Bucky finished lamely. He knew the thing he meant--someone, once, had owned one and he could see it now, clearly, in his mind’s eye, a sturdy handle painted white, though with a thin red stripe near one end, two thick wires holding a series of metal curves. He suspected the tool had belonged to his mother. He knew he’d had a mother, once, because sometimes he caught in the back of his head just the slightest small echo of her voice, but not enough, never enough, to remember her words, or what her voice really sounded like, or how her face looked, or whether she’d been good to him or otherwise.

“Masher. Potato masher, to be more precise,” the genie corrected gently. He sounded tired--exhausted might be a better word.

“Okay.” Bucky felt like an idiot. He always felt like an idiot. He felt broken, and stupid, and lost.

“I think I see my mother’s face,” the genie told him, in the same weary voice. “I see a woman, that is, and when I described her to Thor, my brother, he told me the face I see is hers. Truthfully, I can’t really remember. I can’t remember Thor, either, but everyone says he’s my brother, and so he must be. Also, he often feels sad and guilty when he regards me, in ways I suppose only a brother would. You might wish to turn those sausages now before they burn. I often become distracted, also, when I cook things. Kurt reminds me.”

The genie unfolded himself from Bucky’s chair, drifting into the kitchen in his lighter-than-light way and locating the Bucky’s one fork in the  
drawer where he also kept his plate, bowl, mug and spoon, using it to prod a chunk of potato bobbing in the slow-bubbling water. Carefully, he lifted the pan, pouring off the hot liquid, then rummaged again in the icebox for milk and butter, adding a splash of one and a big chunk of the other to the pot.

Bucky watched him like a man hypnotized. Every motion seemed familiar and right, motions he’d watched a million times, but also, equally, unfamiliar. Also, how in hell could such a creature as the genie know them?

Bucky felt his world, what he knew or thought he knew crumbling at the edges. His jaw dropped, and he knew he was staring. The genie flicked his fingers again, and looked at the pot of potatoes in a pointed kind of way, and somehow they became smooth and fluffy.  
What kind of genie used his magic to mash potatoes, as this one just had, or even knew what potatoes were—or for that matter, had a brother named “Thor?”

“Mashed potatoes are one of my favorites,” the genie told him, drifting back to the chair. “You might want to turn off the hob. The fire. The burner.”

Bucky did so, quickly, glad he’d been warned before the links burned to cinders, through his inattention, in his  one and only frying pan.  
The food smelled good, in a way the canned stuff never did. It made his burrow smell homelike.  To have companionship felt homelike too, as did cooking an actual meal, even such a simple one as this, here with his genie, while the shadows outside his one small window began to stretch out long between the buildings.

A sense of well-being seeped through Bucky, like a warmth inside his chest, if not exactly of friendship—not quite yet, it wasn’t easy for him to trust, not quickly or completely, his life had been too uncertain for that, he suspected, though again, he didn’t remember—then, at least, of  
comradeship.

He ate two of the sausages and a small hill of mashed potatoes, savoring the crisp skins, the spices, the buttery creaminess in each mouthful, while the genie inhaled the rest. They washed the dishes side by side, the genie scrubbing the pot and frying pan and Bucky’s meager collection of dishes, while Bucky dried them with his one thin tea towel.

When the last dish was put away, the genie returned to the mattress, stretching out with a soft groan.

“You do look tired,” Bucky said—which was true. Darker blue shadows lay under the genie's large green eyes, and despite all he’d eaten he appeared thinner than before.

“I depleted my reserves badly making my way to you. It was extremely foolish to do so. I’m afraid…” He stopped there, as if he didn’t want to say what made him afraid—and Bucky didn’t like to ask. Instead, he retreated to his chair, studying his guest as if that would somehow allow  
him to penetrate every mystery that surrounded them both.

“James,” the genie finally chided him softly.

Bucky took out his _Arabian Nights_ book and read, feeling the genie’s mind nestled in next to his, quiet and sleepy, drowsing now and then but absorbing the story just as he did. The closeness of that, the warmth, reminded him of something out of long ago, but of course, again, he couldn’t remember.

At last, still sitting slumped in the chair's embrace, Bucky drifted off himself, and dreamed.

This dream showed him the image of a man--not one of the cold, harsh men, but a big, blond, muscular blue-eyed guy with a friendly face, a picture that flashed into his head so completely and directly it might have been beamed in with one of those ray-guns from the old Flash Gordon serials he actually did remember watching, though Bucky couldn’t have said when or where he’d seen them, or who, if anyone, had been with him.

Next he saw a blonde-haired kid. A skinny, sickly, pale kid with limp yellow hair falling across his forehead. Only his eyes gave him away, showing him to be the same as the muscular guy. Exactly the same. Only so different. The two pictures, so different, so much the same, made  
Bucky’s head pound, and tears squirt up into his eyes, then to run down his cheeks as if there’d be no way to stop them, not ever, ever again.

Before he knew it, Bucky jerked awake--half awake, anyway--and was stumbling his way to the mattress. The genie, barely awake himself, pulled his thin body to one sidem and Bucky dropped down, hard, beside him, making the mattress (which was old and had been left behind in the apartment by a previous tenant) give out a squeak of protest.

After a moment’s hesitation, the genie’s long, narrow blue hand stole up to Bucky’s shoulder, rubbing it, and then the back of his neck, gently as he wept.

A long time went by.    
“What was that?” Bucky asked, when he could. “Who was that?”

“You second wish,” the genie answered. He still looked tired, though not as tired. His blue face held an appearance of sympathy, an expression Bucky couldn’t recall seeing on another’s face for a very, very long time. “You wanted to know if anyone loved you in all the world. In dreams, from out of your own mind, I showed you one who did. Who does. That is Steven. Steve. He, as I said, sent me to discover you.”

Fully awake now, Bucky tried and tried to remember the skinny kid, the powerful man. His mind provided nothing but a pair of shaky images: a round shape like a button with a star in the center; a pair of paper-filled shoes.

“I think I have brain-damage,” he told the genie. “Pretty bad brain damage, maybe?”

“As do I,” the genie answered reassuringly. “One gets used to it, I suppose. One makes do.”

“I don’t want to make do,” Bucky told him. “I want my past back. I want my memories. I want to know what happened to me.”

“I know exactly what was done to me,” the genie said. “James, knowing such things changes nothing. We are as we are, and no magic in the world may heal us. We must shoulder our burdensand march forward, seeing what we make of our worlds. When I’m stronger, I’ll return home, to face what must be faced, and you… indeed, I would be glad if you came with me, as I know you would likely be both happier and safer, but as I've said, I will neither force nor compel you. The choice to come or to stay must be yours.”

“Do you want me to come?” Bucky asked.

As an answer, the genie smiled at him yet again. His face revealed everything—hopefulness, nervousness, friendship, like a shy kid asking the other kids if he can play. Inside Bucky’s head, something seemed to shift and click and pop into alignment, something that had been bent of true for years.

_I just stepped out of Kansas and into Oz_ , he thought, and surprised himself again by knowing exactly what he meant by those words.

In that instant, everything blazed into color. In that instant, he felt surrounded by magic, alive with it, energized, At the same time…

“You’re not really a genie, are you?” Bucky asked.

His companion looked thoughtful.

“No…” he replied slowly, drawing out the word. “Not a genie.  Not as such.”

“What, then?”

“Only Loki.” The smile sweetened, leaving its owner looking both a little shy and far more than a little pleased with himself. “Only Loki Stark, of Stark Tower.”


	23. Leavin' on a Jet Plane

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Avengers in the sky, with angst

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter's title comes from the well-known oldie penned by Henry John  
> Deutschendorf, Jr., better as John Denver.
> 
> As discussed in _The God Who Fell to Earth_ , Bruce is most likely reading a medical journal, rather than an issue of _Cannibals' Quarterly_ , should such a magazine exist.
> 
> The Eagles tune Tony (with harmonies by Clint) treated his teammates to on their previous mission was "em>Desperado."
> 
> The useful and onomatopoeic adjective/verb "smooshed," or "to smoosh" (as in, "pugs are dogs with naturally smooshed-in noses," or "don't sit on the cake, you'll smoosh it") apparently appeared in North America out of nowhere in about 1975, and has only grown in popularity since that time. "Whomp" is another such word, though it dates all the way back to the 1920's.
> 
> Math time! The Quinjet, moving fast, goes at around mach 2.5, or 2.5 times the speed of sound, which translates to 1918.17 miles (3087 kilometers) per hour. New York and Berlin are 3087 miles (6,381 km) apart. If Natasha doesn't take too long finding a place to park (which we all know she won't), the team should hit the ground in Berlin in somewhat less than two hours.
> 
> Although commonly associated with the patches of dangerous but unclaimed territory  
> between the trenches in WWI, the term "no man's land" actually first appears in the _Domesday Book_ (or _Liber de Wintonia_ , "Book of Winchester," the record of the "Great Survey" of England and Wales ordered by William the Conqueror and  
> completed in 1086), where it was used to describe parcels of land that lay just outside  
> London's city walls. Another reference, dated 1320, spells the term as "nonesmanneslond," using it in the somewhat more modern sense of a disputed or unclaimed territory, or one over which there is legal dispute as to ownership.
> 
> Although the phrase "lo, these many years" has seeped into popular culture (including _Seinfeld_ , if I recall correctly), the original source is the Biblical Parable of The Prodigal Son. Protesting the generosity shown toward his "bad" brother, the "good" son says to their father "Lo, these many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment" (Luke 15:29 KJV).
> 
> The phrase (or the Old English version thereof) "the more the merrier" first appeared  
> in the 14th century poem _Pearl_ (line 850, to be exact).
> 
> The party game Musical Chairs (formerly known as "Going to Jerusalem") involves a circle of people moving, as music plays, around a circle of outward-facing chairs. There's always one less chair than the total number of people playing, and when the  
> music stops, everyone scrambles to get a seat. The person left standing is "out." With  
> each person eliminated, another chair is removed, until only one remains. The person  
> who manages to claim it wins the game.

* * *

_Meanwhile, somewhere over the Atlantic_ … Tony thought miserably. He'd finally managed to shake himself out of a funk (or possibly stupor), so profound and extended he felt fairly certain he’d missed out on the joys of at least an hour of stressed nail-biting and blank window-staring while under its influence--better than half the journey.

Given that his nails were already chewed down to the quick, and Loki, who (with or without memories), valued good grooming over almost all things, would almost certainly be horrified by their newly raw, peely appearance when he saw Tony again, maybe that wasn't much of a loss.

Gods. When he saw... What if he never saw...?

Tony forced himself to breathe, three quick gasps, in-out, in-out, in-out, which in turn made Bruce, seated beside him, glance up from his latest issue of _Cannibals' Quarterly_ , a look of mournful sympathy in his already-quite-mournful-enough-to-be-getting-on-with brown eyes.

Yup, the stupor, in his case, had probably been the better option—nails aside. At least in that state, his thoughts didn’t gnaw on themselves like too many hungry rodents smooshed into an undersized cage.

Tony knew the Quinjet (with ever-efficient Natasha at the wheel, Steve having been sidelined from piloting for reasons of only-too-obvious mental stress), had to be zooming along at its usual not-inconsiderable speeds, but subjectively, in Tony Stark time, the aircraft seemed not to move at all, as if the darkness surrounding them, the foggy, starless sky beyond the windows, the featureless ink-dark ocean below, had somehow become everything that existed, and Germany wasn’t anything but a dream-place, not somewhere they could ever actually reach.

_That’s some quality gloom you’ve got going there, Stark,_ Tony told himself, mainly because, so far on their journey, no one else on board seemed to have much, or anything, to say--to him, or to each other.

What was there to say? The outcome of this particular mission would almost certainly determine the shape of all their lives for years to come, whether they went on to heal their mutual wounds, pull up their socks and come together again as a team, as the big, argumentative, dysfunctional, quasi-happy family they’d almost-kinda-sorta been not so very long before, or whether they went on to explode apart into a million pieces, choose sides, and spend the rest of their days glaring at each other across a treacherous no-man’s-land of suspicion, betrayal, and general bad feeling. Who would, rationally, _want_ to discuss those possibilities?

The gods (Norse or otherwise), knew Tony didn’t. These guys were his family, dammit. His only family, Kurt and Loki aside. Even fucking Steve.

“You doin’ okay over there, Grandpa?” Tony asked, after clearing his throat and trying to force a neutral kind of tone into his voice, stepping a little more cautiously than he normally would, conversationally speaking, and careful also not to bring the snark, because Steve did indeed look haunted, and that wasn’t a look that exactly worked for anyone, least of all their fearless leader.  He was madder than hell at Steve--oh, yes, he was--but there had been that story Cap told, that... violation.  There had been Odin, and as far as Tony happened to be concerned, Odin+Anybody=Bad News.

Besides, on Cap, especially, that kind of expression of pure, undiluted misery made Tony feel (at least slightly) guilty, which was weird—possibly even ridiculous—because what in hell did he have to feel guilty about? For once in his frequently-questionable life he was entirely, unassailably on the side of the proverbial angels, but with Steve slumped in his seat looking all stoically tragic, he couldn’t even enjoy his possibly-one-time-only possession of the moral high ground.

Only there wasn't any moral high ground, of that Tony felt fairly certain, and could anyone expect to feel any sort of pleasure when across the aisle and one row forward, Captain-fucking-America happened to be sitting there with _that face_? A face that was bad enough in profile. Straight on, it would probably have been completely soul-destroying.

If Tony believed in souls. Which he didn’t.

So why was he sitting here, very much not enjoying the increasingly busy non-silence inside his own head, and feeling as if something pure and holy had been sucked right the hell out of him? Maybe it was because he found his belief in gods growing exponentially—or maybe his belief in one god in particular, the god who shared his bed, and his life, the god who asked a bazillion questions about every single frickin’ thing under the sun, and was so ridiculously _interested_ in all of it, who left half-emptied tea-mugs all the hell over the penthouse (not to mention Tony's office), and drying paintbrushes beside every sink and heart-breakingly genius drawings and paintings and designs littering literally every horizontal surface in the penthouse, including their bed.

Loki’s absence, even for the relatively short amount of time he’d been gone, ripped a giant hole in the center of Tony’s life, and left it bleeding. The thought that Loki might be lost, or confused, or--every single fucking god forbid--in _actual danger_ , well, that damn near destroyed him.

Tony found himself sucking in another breath of recycled air, a big. ragged breath that made him sound like he was seconds away from sobbing. Which he wasn’t, for the record. But still, how fucking dare Steve sit there with his tragic-face, making him feel guilty?

He knew the answer, really. Steve looked tragic because he knew Loki's potential for turning, in a heartbeat, into a highly dangerous individual, the same way Tony knew Bucky's potential for lethally Winter-Soldiering-out at a moment's notice.

Steve looked tragic because he, although frozen deep in a permafrost of Mid-century repression and denial, was shit-scared for the same reason Tony was shit-scared, because Bucky wasn't his buddy, his pal, even his BFF (or the 1940's equivalent), he was to Cap that same thing Loki was to Tony: that perfect, irreplaceable, infinitely-loved One.

So, poor Cap. And poor Tony too, while they were at it.

“Tone,” Bruce murmured, too kind and good a man to keep on flipping Tony shit in their usual way at that particular moment, even if, under the circumstances, Tony might have found the afore-referenced usual shit (and the flipping of it) infinitely easier to take than his ScienceBro's current gentle decency.

Bruce laid a hand on Tony’s forearm in that way he sometimes had, the firm-but-brotherly way that always made Tony’s heart twist a bit, because the fact was, Bruce didn’t really so much like to touch, or be touched, but he’d push through that anyway, to show that he cared, that he loved Tony, that they really were brothers in every way but biology.

In the row ahead of them, Thor made a big, low-pitched humming sound, a groan for all intents and purposes. Poor guy, he'd probably had enough to deal with up to that point, in the never-ending drama of _Loki is my brother, no he really isn’t, oh, holy crap (or the SpaceViking equivalent), yes he_ , _really, really is and what does that say about our father, our culture, our kingdom, and everything that’s happened for lo, these many years?_

All of which Thor still carried. None of which Loki now remembered. So, add "poor Thor" to the mix.

Tony knew he ought to have said something kind, something encouraging even, to Point Break at that moment, but just then he didn’t have it in him, any more than he’d had it in him to say encouraging words to Kurt as they were boarding. Kurt who suddenly was coming with, no arguments to the contrary accepted.

What arguments could Tony have possibly given? Kurt, after all, was German. He knew the language (although, since most of the Germans Tony had met to date spoke better English than he did, language didn't seem likely to present that much of a barrier). He knew the culture. He'd visited Berlin many times, and knew the ins and outs of the formerly-divided city.

Tony might, he supposed, have reminded his friend of the risk they were traveling into, but Kurt, at least on the surface, appeared so brisk and encouraging that to speak of danger felt...

It felt cowardly. It felt stupid, and so he'd turned his gaze away from Kurt's steadily-glowing eyes and muttered something along the lines of, "Yeah. Sure, bro. The more the merrier."

Kurt, it hit Tony in that moment, had lost a hell of a lot of people given his relatively-young years, friends and family and those he’d tried his level best to protect, and although he’d kept his faith and his goodness through all that loss, losing Loki (Tony suspected), might just be, for his furry German friend, the straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak, because Kurt and Loki had bonded, on a level that made the Tony's friendship with Bruce look like the flimsy connection of casual acquaintances.

Still, despite his own growing friendship with Kurt, Tony had found himself turning chickenshit, abandoning Kurt to Natasha’s care, letting Nat be the one to speak the words of encouragement, because he just didn’t have it in him.

Peeking between seats, he could see the two of them now, up in the cockpit, talking softly between themselves as the autopilot did most of the heavy lifting, flightwise, Nat's thumb running gently, repetitively, over the spade-shaped tip of Kurt's tail, squeezing it like some kind of furry, living stressball.

"I suck on every level," Tony muttered.

“Tone,” Bruce said again, just as sympathetic, but maybe a touch more emphatic.

“I’m okay,” Tony responded, his voice creaking like rusty hinges. “I’m fine.” He couldn’t (because he did suck, he truly did) meet Bruce’s eyes.

The echo of that goddamn Eagles song he’d sung in this very cabin moaned through his head. … _you’d better let somebody love you… (better let somebody love you)._

Jesus. He had let somebody love him. He had, and he’d loved that person in return, and this is where it brought him—to feeling so fucking scared, and so sad, with his face no doubt looking every bit as tragic as Steve's.

He thought of Loki heading off to school, dressed like a rock star but with a backpack of snacks and art supplies, practically bouncing onto the elevator in his excitement about the day that lay ahead, his unwieldy portfolio hugged to his chest as he smiled a final goodbye. (no, not final, please no, not ever final) He thought again of Loki curled up beside him in bed, his words—hell, his voice, that tone of earnest, innocent hopefulness--as he’d pleaded for their future as a family, for their baby just to _be_ , and the brightly-lighted Quinjet cabin seemed to go dark around him.

How the hell had it come to this? To Bucky Barnes. Fucking Bucky Barnes, Steve's Bucky Barnes, who had, after all (and Cap didn’t think Tony knew it, but he did, the same way he knew most of the secrets people tried to hide from him) killed his parents. Unwillingly, okay. With no knowledge or control over his actions, fine. Good riddance to Howard, anyway, fucking Howard whose giant ego made him think himself invincible, no extra security required.

Maria, on the other hand… there was no reason for anyone to have hurt her, none whatsoever. She’d never hurt anyone in all her life, and she knew nothing about her husband’s activities. They, Barnes’s handlers, could have knocked her out, left her alone, but they killed her because it was expedient.

So, yeah, Steve thought he didn’t know, but having basically read his way through every file S.H.I.E.L.D. possessed, especially in light of their little Hydra infestation problem, Tony totally did. Keep your friends close, your enemies closer, your frenemies closest of all, he’d always considered. Therefore, he knew that Barnes had been traded around between Hydra (National Socialist Branch), and Hydra-in-the-former-Soviet-Union, and Russia, and also to certain unscrupulous forces in the good ol’ U.S.A., hence some of the difficulties Cap had found himself involved in.

He knew Barnes (beloved of Steve, let's not forget that), had been brainwashed, to use a quaint, old fashioned term, his memories interfered with, that he’d been frozen and refrozen often enough to suffer freezer burn and be unfit for consumption. That whatever he’d done hadn’t been by choice, that Barnes wasn’t the one responsible, not really. For all that, Tony tried and failed to find it in himself to forgive the man, unreasonable as that might be.

Unstable and unpredictable, subject to outside control at the drop of a hat, he'd killed Maria. He'd killed Maria, and with her any chance for any unclouded, unpoisoned relationship, after Howard was out of the picture.

Barnes, in his Winter Soldier persona, had been powerful enough to require the combined whomp of Steve, Nat and Sam Wilson to even slow him down. With that in mind, what could Barnes do to Loki—or, equally scary, if not more so, what could Loki do, should he rise to the occasion of defending himself, something that might or might not even occur to him as a possibility?

“Hello, probable international incident,” Tony found himself groaning—although that remained far from his main worry. If Barnes hurt Loki in any way, forget restraint, forget Steve and his feelings. If he hurt Loki, either as the Winter Soldier or as himself, Tony would kill him. No hesitation. No question. He was an Avenger, watch him avenge.

If Steve tried to stand in his way… Tony didn’t want to choose up sides, didn’t want to start an Avengers civil war, but he would. For Loki, he would.

Bruce gave his arm a slightly firmer squeeze, both a gesture of comfort and a warning. Tony suspected he’d been full-on glowering in Cap’s direction, as Sam Wilson, who Steve currently had parked next to him, went the pep-talk route with their formerly-fearless leader.

Sam’s face, in contrast to Steve’s (or his own, if Tony's suspicions were accurate), appeared calm and reasonable. His pep-talking looked properly peppy, and probably actually was, because from what Tony knew of him, Sam seemed like a good guy and a pretty chill dude. Except that, clearly, not a single word he spoke had managed to get through. 

Just as clearly, Steve knew he’d been, at least in part, Tony’s least favorite flavor of human, which was sanctimonious dickhead, and that a big part of that part lay entirely on Steve himself, not on Odin or any other outside interference, and even if Tony had been able to push aside his current feelings of rage/fear/betrayal, Steve-o obviously intended to push aside any and all I-was-mindfucked-by-a-god excuses and carry the full burden of I-sent-an-innocent-being-to-certain-(or even possible) death across his manly, heroic shoulders.

Tony suspected things had been ever-so-much easier back in 1945, when the bad guys were easy to identify and Steve hadn’t been forced to consider whether he might actually be one of them. He could practically read those precise thoughts, written in the furrows of his teammate’s noble and all-American brow. Tony found he didn’t mind so much, come to think of it, if Steve-o felt that guilt, because he may not have deliberately ended this mess the way it ended, but he sure as hell started it the way it started.

By this point, even the QuinJet’s futuristically-advanced air processing system couldn’t filter out the heavy atmosphere of gloom filling the cabin.

Clint nudged Tony’s shoulder with a steaming sippy cup. “Take and drink. It’s hot and bitter, just like you, my friend.”

Tony, accepting the cup, knew the archer might have something there. Bitterness and anger weren’t what he needed, and they certainly weren’t what Loki needed. In lieu of deeper self-examination, however, he faked an exaggerated eyelash-bat, calling across the cabin, “Hey, Phil! Clint says I’m hot.”

Director (who was probably wondering why he hadn’t taken one of his own aircraft, or flown coach on a crowded commercial flight, anything besides hitch a ride with the Feuding Avengers, Earth’s Crankiest Superheroes) glanced up from his totally-not-a-StarkPad and gave a bone-dry, Director kind of laugh, which sounded exactly like, “Heh.”

Actually, Tony could guess why Phil was with them. He’d come along in his capacity of Wendy to their Lost Boys, to troubleshoot with the locals, let at least one wiser head (hopefully) prevail, possibly to tidy up after the inevitable mess, making Tony wonder if he ought to start calling Phil “Mom” instead of "Director."

He sipped the coffee Clint had handed him, more to let the archer know he appreciated the gesture, and also that he wasn’t totally losing his shit.

Clint gave him a manly shoulder-squeeze, then returned to what they euphemistically referred to as “the galley,” which was actually a microwave and a Keurig bolted to a counter, with a small freezer cubby overhead.

The whole setup was pathetic. Why did his beautiful Quinjet have such a pathetic galley? Why did it not have a fully functional food and/or beverage replicator ala _Star Trek_? Tony wondered how long he could distract himself with thoughts on how to engineer a fully functional food and/or beverage replicator before the stomach-churning deluge of worries about what might be happening to Loki came rushing back in, driving all saner thoughts away before them.

“I guess I picked the wrong week to quit hard drugs,” Tony muttered into his coffee, as Bruce closed up his magazine, shook his head and gave a little half-grin. He understood the reference. Steve clearly did not, because he broke off in the middle of thanking Clint for bringing him a cup of hot chocolate (with mini marshmallows, Grandpa did like his mini marshmallows) to gape at Tony with an expression of shock and disapproval.

“Chill, Cap.” Clint patted his shoulder. “It’s a quote. From an old movie. A new movie to you, though, I guess. Old to the rest of us.”

The ripple of an unmistakable "hard drugs are no laughing matter" expression moved across Steve’s face, but he appeared to be too distraught to actually say anything. He didn’t even sip his cocoa.

Bruce’s expression clearly read: _This is bad_.

His ScienceBro wasn’t wrong. Tony kept running over the maybes and hopefullys and _oh, no, not that’s!_ in his head, with the last option popping up about three times as often as the rest, until, at last, all he could make him mind come up with were the most craptastic options imaginable.

Option _Numero Uno_ : a ginourmous, no-holds-barred, get-the-kids-down-to-the-storm-cellar-honey fight to the death or near-death between a god with god-powers (version 2.0, now with memory-wipe) and a bionic, brainwashed and genetically enhanced assassin (ditto).

Results: disasterous, as Steve no doubt also knew full well. That is, he knew Bucky Version 2.0, aka The Winter Soldier. He’d fought Bucky Version 2.0, and even with Nat and Sam Wilson on board, as mentioned, nearly got his clock cleaned for him. He didn’t, however, know Loki.

Hell, even Loki didn’t know Loki, and Tony, quite frankly, didn’t exactly relish the thought of his own beloved, cuddly, vulnerable Horny Smurf discovering that of which he might find himself capable. He didn’t fear a return of Loki 1.0—“White Loki” as his Loki tended to call him—it wasn’t that. It was more…

Option _Numero Dos_ , even more unpredictable, that Loki had crash-landed somewhere in Bucky Barnes’s immediate vicinity, somehow made contact, resulting in…. what? Battle? Death? Or just Loki being Loki—which these days meant demanding that the Winter Soldier provide him with a hobbit-like number of warm meals per day and keep him entertained, all in an inhumanly charming and irresistible kind of way, all this continuing until the team arrived to either interrupt the cozy interlude or, otherwise, to save the day, should Barnes’s evil twin have somehow become activated.

Had he been a praying man, Tony would have fallen on his knees and prayed his heart out against this last possibility. It shouldn’t have been a worry. Not really. Yet it was, because as Bruce had not-so-helpfully pointed out to him, Loki was a god of Chaos in the same way Thor was a god of thunder—all that energy would just gather over their heads, and then…

Ah, hell. And then. Anything could happen. Anything.

After yet another glance at Tony, Bruce moved across the aisle and started talking to Cap in his gentle, earnest way. Tony wasn’t sure Steve found himself particularly comforted, but it was the kind thing to do and his ScienceBro was probably the right one to do it. To conclude the day’s game of musical chairs, Clint dropped back into the seat next to Tony’s.

“Y’know, kiddo will be all right, I think,” he said without preamble. “I mean, the whole dropping-into-a-completely-foreign-city-in-search-of-a-dangerous-lunatic aside, he tends to land on his feet.”

“Because it worked so well for him last time?”

“There is that.” The archer gave a quiet laugh, not particularly humorous. “Still… I dunno, I think this is different. Loki has this way of taking the road less traveled, y’know? Like you can go at him all hell-bent on destruction and end up having milk and cookies and talking about Disney flicks and Shakespeare, not even sure how you got there.”

Tony laughed too, almost with genuine amusement, because, yes, that was pretty much the current state of Loki.

“I miss my brother,” Thor put in, in a tragic kind of way. He’d opted to travel like a normal Avenger this time, rather than zoom along up above, courtesy of his mighty hammer. “I must have him returned to me. This Winter Soldier is a fell adversary,” he added, in an even more dismal tone, after a moment’s contemplation.

“Yeah, that more-or-less fits my intel too, courtesy of the research firm of J.A.R.V.I.S. and J.A.R.V.I.S.” Tony didn’t see fit to share the other part, the part the Winter Soldier had taken in fucking up his own particular history.

“Gentlemen,” Natasha announced suddenly from the cockpit. “Berlin in fifteen minutes.”

“How far out are you putting us?” Clint asked, on the clock now and all about the logistics—or maybe just concerned how long he’d have to spend doing cardio while the rest of them zoomed along being all enhanced, or wearing supersuits.

“There’s a park located a block away from the shop where we picked up Barnes’s image. We can set down there.”

“Groovy.” Clint checked over his quiver, with its variety-pak of arrows. “Any chance there’s some kind of tranq that works on Winter Soldiers? ‘Cause that would be cool.”

“And Loki,” Cap said grimly, “Don’t forget about Loki.”

Kurt made a remark, in German, that even Tony with his iffy language skills, could tell had been less that complimentary to their fearless leader.

That did it, Tony decided. Steve was _so_ not forgiven.


	24. We Can Be Heroes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _They_ are approaching Bucky's cozy Berlin burrow. Loki doesn't know who _They_ are, only that he's as frightened as he can ever remember being.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title this time comes from David Bowie's 1977 _Heroes_ album--the second installment, appropriately, of his " _Berlin Trilogy_." 
> 
> The batteries in question would be 9-volts, the little rectangular ones.
> 
> Loki's scary fish is the Anglerfish (order _Lophiiformes_ , a bony fish of the deep ocean (and, actually, the continental shelves) which attracts prey with a bioluminescent lure (the _esca_ or _illicium_ ) that sticks out from its forehead. They do indeed have great, big eyes and pointy, pointy teeth.
> 
> Loki's partial memory comes to us from Norse mythology. In the original story, Loki changes himself into a salmon to escape capture and punishment, but Thor catches him and turns him over to Odin, who binds him inside a mountain with a serpent dripping poison onto his head.

* * *

“James.” Loki shook his companion’s shoulder (the soft, human shoulder, rather than the cold and invulnerable one of metal). He felt groggy, still half-enclosed in the folds of sleep, but with a chill feeling of apprehension in the pit of his stomach that he found himself unable to ignore. “James? If you please? Wake now?”

James, sunk so deep into his own sleep than Loki could scarcely reach him, muttered a word or two, at a volume beneath even the threshold of Loki’s highly acute hearing. He stirred a little, but did not wake, entrapped as ever in senseless and terrible dreams which passed beyond Loki’s limited understanding of (as his brother Thor might have said) things Midgardian.

James still could not be reached, even when Loki prodded as firmly within his mind as he dared. His thoughts remained impossible to read as ever—not fragmented, not shattered, but reminding Loki of the time he’d carelessly switched on one of the burners to Tony’s range whilst one of the Tupperwares sat upon the top. Everything melted, the red plastic lid bleeding into the translucent container below it, emitting a burned plastic reek, and clouds of black smoke along with it, so strong they made Loki retch.

Such was James’s mind, smoke-filled and melted, as if many times it had been heated nearly to boiling, and many times cooled again, stretched thin in some of its parts, clotted in others.

Loki wondered if his own mind appeared so, or if it was filled instead with neat though all-encompassing tunnels, like the vast system of ants' tunnels he’d seen behind glass in the Natural History Museum, the busy ants burrowing and burrowing for no good reason he could determine, their infinitesimal minds, when Loki touched them, sour and electric, the flavor of them like licking batteries (which was an interesting thing Thor had discovered and taught him).

Nothing within James’s mind responded. Even Loki's most insistent attempts to rouse him, when he'd gone to the point beyond which it felt truly uncomfortable to venture, he'd received no reaction. He didn't wish to injure James, who had already been hurt so badly by others--certainly not as he'd hurt Tony, an incident that still hung heavy on Loki's conscience. Despite being so damaged--perhaps _because_ it was so damaged, his own, alien mind did not appear particularly compatible with the minds of Midgardians.

Loki feared that which approached. It seemed as one being, with one purpose, and yet possessed more conscious minds than he could readily count, layer upon layer upon layer, minds that appeared to encompass no fear of their own, and no real anger as Loki understood anger, only unwavering intent—the intent to recover a valuable possession, one they regarded as theirs alone. The coldness of that regard made Loki shudder. These adversaries sought James, not because he was precious to them, or even important, but because they'd created him out of their time and effort, rendering him into something of value rather than something they cared for. Waste, to them, was not the waste of James's life, his constant searching, his sorrow and confusion, but the waste of their investment, as if all James was, or ever had been, made him of no more worth than one of the certificates of stock Tony kept in the penthouse locking-box.

They would take James from his snug burrow, where he knew, if not happiness, then something akin to contentment, and would stand him upon a shelf, lock the door upon him, and call their collection complete.

Loki's head spun. Sensing all these things, while understanding only the smallest part of them,made the approach of these enemies doubly fearful. He couldn't comprehend the way they wanted without wanting, without passion, desire or need.

They seemed more alien, in that, than he'd ever thought of being.

“I feel anger towards your Steven Rogers, James,” Loki said. “And I am also very afraid of him, for he has threatened awful things against me, if I find myself unable to secure your presence. I do, however, understand his need, in that we all want and fear for what we love--I do, at least, as do Tony, and Kurt, and others. I know your Steven wants to see you safe, that he would keep you from the dead-hearted ones, our adversaries, and so would I, because you are hurt as I was hurt, and are also, very nearly, my friend.”

James gave no sign of hearing him. Locked up in his dreams, he experienced none of Loki’s emotion, so strong now it put a veil of green across his vision and spilled green light over his pale blue skin. The power of it sizzled in his fingertips, behind his eyes, to the very ends of his horns.

It felt horrible, and terrifying.

“Too much. No, too much,” Loki moaned, rocking back on his heels, forcing himself to breathe deeply and slowly, to contain the sense of overwhelming panic, which had begun to grow even before he’d awakened.

He must maintain control, Loki knew that. He must not allow his heart to pound, or his hands to tremble with fear. Perhaps if he pretended these were only the after-effects of his own nightmares, as obscure to him in their meaning, and as full of dread as any James dreamed...

Yes, yes, only dreams, Loki attempted to convince himself. Dreams mean nothing. They presage nothing. They are only random storms of bitter chemicals and misfiring neurons raging within the wreck of my brain.

Wasn’t that what J always told him, or something like it, in such moments?

Loki found science, J’s science, Tony’s science, small, comforting and perfect, like something he might easily have put in a box and examined at his leisure. It rarely seemed enough to explain the complexity of his own existence. It was nothing like magic, infinite in both size and complication, full of connections that would never be still, that might change in an instant.

Loki knew it wasn’t his dreams that made him frightened. With every instinct he possessed, he recognized the enemy, sensing them come closer, and closer, as if at any moment their cold hands might close over his skin. How Loki wished J, ever near, ever listening, ever aware, could be with him in this moment, both to warn him and to strengthen him with steadfast logic and kindness. He wished, also, for the warmth of Tony’s body against his, for Tony’s sleep-roughed voice murmuring to him in the night, soothing even when the words it spoke proved to be utter nonsense. He wished that he could reach out and touch Kurt’s mind, which was like being allowed to float gently upon warm and placid waters, everything within Kurt understandable, and good.

Beyond that, one of the three—J, Tony, or Kurt—might also understand his adversaries, so far outside Loki's remembered experience, and give advice as to what he ought to do next. He didn't want to fight, or to kill, or whatever else was expected--but he didn't know what to do instead.

He wanted to keep James safe, not crouch alone and helpless by James’s shabby bedside (Loki refused to call him “Bucky”—“Bucky was a foolish name, a ridiculous name, fit not even for a lap dog), in a flat where the lights now refused to light, and the machine of heating had gone silent, no longer clanking or hissing or emitting its warmth into the room.

Loki reached out past those four plain walls, just as at home he might have reached out of the bedroom and down the corridor to find Kurt as he lay sleeping. He felt nothing. No one--and yet, many lived here within the building, detectable at every hour.

He felt no one. Not the old woman with painful knees who lived in the flat above, or the sly, aloof, watchful little mind of the cat she kept as her companion. Not the slow and sleepy minds of the boys next door, who’d so often played quite interesting music deep into the late hours.

Loki extended the green glow farther out around himself, watching his breath smoke in the frigid air.

He inched his consciousness forward, backward, up and down and all around him, and through the whole of that many-roomed gray building, but found only blank, frozen places where those living others had been.

Tears coursed down his cheeks. Loki understood, after a time, that the spaces he felt weren't the spaces left behind by living beings suddenly fled.

They were...

They were...

 _Gone_ was the strongest word Loki could allow himself to come up with.

Gone. As if they had never been.

After a time, he suspected it wasn’t fear that caused him to tremble so, and neither was it cold. He felt grief, chilly, hopeless grief for the old woman, the cat, the noisy, cheerful boys with their music--for all who’d lived harmless lives within this squat gray building, and for those lives so carelessly ended.

“An ant has no quarrel with a boot,” said a cool, supercilious voice within his head, "The hour comes round, the life ends--what of it?"

Loki thought he recognized White Loki’s voice, and yet the voice was not White Loki's, was it?

Surely not the voice of he who constantly advised him--wisely, if a bit cynically.

Only then he knew, the voice _was_ White Loki’s, and White Loki…

Loki cried out, sprawling backward onto the floor, which was concrete, hard and cold through the scanty protection of James's thin, worn carpet.

He was White Loki, and White Loki was him, and all the terrible things...

“You’ve known. You’ve always known,” White Loki informed him, sounding somewhat kinder now, but no less implacable. “Why you were greeted with such suspicion? Why you were poisoned? Why does Steven Rogers hate you so? Do you truly believe you are the hero of this story, my friend?”

Loki glanced up, seeing the familiar figure clearly now, just in front of him, confident and handsome, elaborately helmed and armored, rage and pain in his bright green eyes.

He knew, he supposed, because those eyes were unmistakably his eyes, even if their expression differed from his own. Perhaps White Loki was correct, and he’d always known, in some part of himself, but he still remembered nothing, felt everything—that the cold, blank spaces had been people, and that he’d cared for them, even if he hadn’t known them. That he was nothing, nothing, like the dead-hearted men who’d bent James to their will, the cold-hearted men who now approached.

It wasn’t fear he experienced now, but anger. He wasn't like them, even if he once had been. He wasn't cruel. He wasn't heartless.

"I could be..." Loki murmured.

"Beg pardon?" White Loki responded. "I'm not sure I caught that. Could be cruel, like me? Heartless, like me?" He paused. "Could be burdened with glorious purpose." He paused again.

"Like me?"

"No," Loki said softly. "Not that."

"Then what?" White Loki asked, bending a little, looming over him. "Do tell." Another pause, as if this time, despite himself, he truly wanted an answer. "Please?"

Loki felt his fear ebb as a curious sort of calmness settled over him. He suspected, without the knowledge of his conscious mind, that his body readied itself for battle. That it would, against all odds, defend James, defend the small singer he carried within him, and defend—almost as an afterthought--himself.

Loki suspected, also without his knowledge, that his body had begun, of necessity, to recall old lessons, old training. It would meet any who came against them, and if required…

He didn’t know. He didn’t know! What would it do? Of what acts was it capable?

Loki cradled his head between his hands. If he wished not to fight, he would need to think instead.

He would need to keep himself, and the torrent of emotions within him, under particular control.

He needed to hold himself in a state of calmness, so that he might be clever.

"I could be," he said. "Maybe... I could be the hero? I could be the hero of this story?"

When he looked up, White Loki wasn't there. Loki thought, somehow, he wouldn't see him again.

He could be brave, for hadn’t he been brave when he reached out, in love and concern, to save Darius, his friend? He would be brave, though the task felt impossibly difficult, nearly beyond him.

Loki laid his flushed cheek against the cool metal of James’s arm, knowing that to do so was no doubt an impertinence, but not stopping himself in the action. The artificial limb felt so entirely solid against his flesh, the only thing stable in all the rapidly revolving world. Loki liked, as always, to listen to the sound it made, the hum that moved through the circuits the arm possessed in place of nerves and sinews.

He shut his outer eyes and followed those circuits with the eyes of his mind, attempting to determine, from the many things he’d learned from Tony and J, what those circuits were, what gave them function, what they did as sparks danced in a mad whirl through each part, like the bright little lights, called “chaser lights,” Tony had sometimes shown him during the time of Christmas. If he had been better able to concentrate, Loki might have found the sparks comforting, for all their motion, had not the enemy come so near.

In that instant, as Loki listened, words tore through James’s head, harsh words of the tongue that now and then came into Natasha’s mind when she did not place a close guard on her thinking.

Those words formed a spell, Loki knew, a terrible spell quite unlike his own magic, which was fluid and endlessly malleable, endlessly adaptable. Written, they appeared like the bars of a cage, spoken, they clanged like fetters, flung out to bind James fast. Loki knew that if all these words, together, should happen to be spoken aloud, if they were let to enter in at the chambers of James’s ears, then James’s reason would be overthrown, his powerful body made to do the bidding of those who pronounced the spell.

He knew, at those times, that James became like a genie indeed, forced to do the bidding of any master who called him forth. He knew also that James both did and did not possess understanding of this state of being, that when unbound he sought without ceasing for the man he had been, the young man with the bright and easy smile who had been Steven Rogers’s bosom friend, and yet, because the cruel men who had nailed the words within James’s mind had undertaken to break all he possessed of his own self, nearly every memory, every vestige of the brave and good-humored James had been burned out of him, until only the melted parts remained.

When wholly bound by the words, he ceased to be James entirely.

Loki pushed himself upright, gazing down upon his new friend, a great sympathy stealing over him. Physically, he felt extremely weary, and also more than a little sick, because he had eaten all the food James had kept in the flat, and all the food he’d more recently purchased, and Loki did not know where to get more. He had become a bit spoilt back home in the tower, because there was always food in plenty within Tony’s cupboards, and if he could not find something there that he fancied, then the kind family Rosenblum who kept their shop of eating just off the lobby would make for him nearly all his favorite things, except those that involved the meat of a pig, or certain types of creatures of the sea, and if he wanted any of those at that particular moment, J would order for him whatever he craved from one of many diverse places.

Loki’s eyes stung, and he would have liked to have wept, both for homesickness and the more immediate misery of his body—and because, as Kurt and dear Dr. McCoy explained to him, the chemicals that flooded his brain in aid of the little one growing within him made him more prone to emotion.

Clint had told him that she-who-was-once-his-wife had been much the same when the children of Clint (now both nearly grown) waxed within her.

Loki had not found the comparison particularly comforting.

“James,” he whispered into the sleeping man’s ear, “James, I would be happy if you were to wake. I am new to being a hero, and feel somewhat afraid. Also, my stomach feels unpleasant.”

Only James did not wake, not in the usual sense of waking. The terrible words that fettered him drifted slowly through his mind, catching and tearing here and there like the barbs of fishhooks.

Or maybe not like fishhooks, maybe like the terrible dark fish J had shown him in pictures, the fish that lived far down in the very greatest depths of the sea, a deceptive glimmer of living brightness stretched before them, their great terrible eyes and teeth lurking in the darkness behind the light.

No, only fishhooks after all, Loki told himself. Only fishhooks, and with tenderness and care, fishhooks may be removed, the wounds they make perhaps healed.

Careful, as always, of his horns, Loki pressed his brow to James’s brow, which felt hot and slick with sweat. A lightning bolt of memory lanced through his own head, in which he struggled and struggled, while Thor held him fast, but not kindly (and why would Thor, his brother who loved him, hold him so?), while a sharp, bright-burning pain tore within his mouth, between his teeth. He’d bitten hard upon his own tongue during that time of pain, Loki realized, and some time had slipped by him. Now the first paling of the night into day showed at the edges of James’s dark window curtains—and Loki knew in that moment that the enemy had, at last, come very near.

He knew the time of battle approached them, that the soldiers of darkness surrounded them in the fading dark of the night.

Loki’s heart beat ever more quickly, but not because he felt afraid. With great gentleness and precision, he once more extended a tendril of his own consciousness into the darkness within James’s head, deep into the cavern at the center of James’s mind where the cruel, controlling words had been hidden.

The greater part of Loki’s self remained aware, noting the black-clad bodies slipping like shadows toward the windows of James’s burrow.

Seventeen. They were seventeen in number. Seventeen sent against two, the masters at the back, ready for when they'd reached close enough to call forth their tool.

Only suddenly, just like that, like a lock opening to a key, James's mind opened to him, and Loki had an answer, an answer hidden inside that very same number.

_Seventeen._

1917, the year of James’s birth.

Thor had told him the year of his own birth was 964—but that didn't seem to Loki even a possibility. Perhaps Thor had been making mischief with him?

1917.

Seventeen.

 _Simnátsatʹ_.

Seventeen.

Семнадцать.

With great care, but also great thoroughness, Loki broke the bars of the letters with his Craft. When not one remained intact, he gathered up the shards and ripped them away.

James screamed, bolting upright just as the windows exploded inward, showering his and Loki’s bodies with bits of glass like sharp snow.

James screamed again, was still screaming into Loki's ear even as Loki bundled him up tightly in his arms to teleport them both far away.

Only far wasn’t far in his usual sense. Far, as it turned out, actually appeared to be quite near, as Loki hadn’t possessed anything like the strength of body to carry them decently out of danger.

They landed hard in the familiar cobbled alleyway at the side of James’s building, James's body on top of Loki’s body, Loki’s arms still twined tightly round his neck.

James's eyes opened then, wide and confused.

“I am not a villain,” Loki whispered urgently. “I will be the hero of this story, and I will defend you, as you will defend me. We will come out of this together in the end. You shall see, James.  _We_ shall see.”

“Loki. What…?” James began, the only words, it seemed, in his deep confusion, that he could manage to speak. He stopped to cough, pressing his face against Loki's shoulder, which hurt, but only a little.

The heavy tread of boot-soles, ever nearer, thundered over the stone-clad street.

 

End of Part Two

To be continued in _The God Who Saved a City_


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